MadSci Network: Astronomy
Query:

Re: Have we sent a craft or telescope anywhere outside our galaxy?

Date: Wed Apr 28 22:33:12 2004
Posted By: Steve Sell, Staff, Aerospace Engineering, Payload Systems Inc.
Area of science: Astronomy
ID: 1083167852.As
Message:

Tom,

The answer to your question: no man-made object has travelled outside our galaxy (the Milky 
Way).  The farthest man made object is the Voyager 1 spacecraft which left earth on September 
5, 1977.  In over 26 years of travel, it has made it about 8.4 billion miles from earth.  As far as 
that  sounds, that only carries it just beyond our solar system.  To find out a lot more about 
Voyager 1, you should visit the voyager web site:
 http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

The Milky Way galaxy is a MUCH bigger than our solar system.  In fact the Milky Way is made of 
over 200 billion stars!  And our sun is just one of them!  And just to give you an idea of how big 
the Milky Way is.  If you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).  It would 
take you over 100,000 years to travel from one side to the other!  For comparison, the voyager 
spacecraft is traveling about 10.5 miles per second.  So it would take voyager over 1.7 billion 
years to make it that far!

So as you can see, getting out of the galaxy is something that just isn't possible with current 
technology.  Just getting to the edge of the solar system took over 26 years!

For more information of the Milky Way galaxy, visit:
 http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/solarsystem/where.shtml

-Steve


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