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On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s; 58,500 km/h; 36,400 mph). It was the fastest (average speed with respect to Earth) human-made object ever launched from Earth.
Artist's depiction of Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter. The exploration of Jupiter has been conducted via close observations by automated spacecraft.It began with the arrival of Pioneer 10 into the Jovian system in 1973, and, as of 2024, has continued with eight further spacecraft missions in the vicinity of Jupiter and two more en route.
The trip to Jupiter also made for a long mission, 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 years to first solar perihelion, 8 years to second. Following the appointment of Sean O'Keefe as Administrator of NASA, the entirety of the OPSP program was canceled as part of President George W. Bush 's request for the 2003 United States federal budget . [ 26 ]
The nearest star is 4.2 light-years away, and at 15.341 km/s, the spacecraft travels one light-year in about 19,541 years - during which time the nearby stars will also move substantially. In roughly 42,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass the star Ross 248 (10.30 light-years away from Earth) at a distance of 1.7 light-years. [ 94 ]
In October 2018, just months after its launch, it broke the record of being the closest a human-made object has ever gotten to the sun, at 26.55 million miles -- a record previously set in 1976 by ...
Pioneer 10 – launched in 1972, flew past Jupiter in 1973 and is heading in the direction of Aldebaran (65 light years away) in the constellation of Taurus.Contact was lost in January 2003, and it is estimated to have passed 134 astronomical units (AU; one AU is roughly the average distance between Earth and the Sun: 150 million kilometers (93 million miles)).
The spacecraft came so close to our star that if the distance between Earth and the sun were the length of an American football field, the spacecraft would be about 4 yards from the end zone ...
It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. [4] At a distance of 167.34 AU (25.0 billion km; 15.6 billion mi) from Earth as of February 2025, [4] it is the most distant human-made object from Earth. [5]