THE SCALE OF SPACE

« our journey into space - it is far too slow.

We must ride in a super spaceship that can travel at the highest speed possible. This is the speed of light.

Light travels at a speed of about 300,000 km a second, or 1,080 million km an hour. Science fiction stories and films feature starships propelled by photon rockets, which achieve the speed of light by beaming intense light rays from their engines.

The 'Star Trek' adventure series features the best known of these, the starship Enterprise. NASA called the first prototype space shuttle orbiter Enterprise in its honour. We start out from Earth and visit the Moon first.

The 385,000-km lunar journey, at the speed of light, is over in a blink of an eye, taking a little over a second.

We next aim for the Sun, nearly 150 million km away.

We get there in 8 1/2 minutes. From there we venture forth to the planet Pluto in the outskirts of the solar system.

We reach the planet, currently about 4,400 million km away, in just four hours. 3.Voyage to the stars At Pluto, even though we are on the edge of the solar system, the stars appear no closer.

They are still only pinpoints of light. But we make course for a small dim red star in the constellation Centaurus (the Centaur).

We call it Proxima Centauri.

It is the nearest star to us. The journey to Proxima Centauri takes not just hours, nor days, nor months, but years.

In fact about four years and three months (4.28 years)! That is how long it has taken us, travelling at the speed of light, to cover the distance just to the nearest star. And, of course, that is also the time it takes light from the. »