• Question: How many miles away is Earth to Pluto.

    Asked by bob my G 234 to Pete on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Pete Gwynne

      Pete Gwynne answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      so i’ve had a bit of a look on the internet and it looks like pluto is 4.5 billion kilometers from the sun, and Earth is 149 million from the sun. so pluto must be about 4.35 billion (4,350,000,000) km from earth. That’s about 30 times further from earth to pluto than from the sun to earth.

      in 2006 NASA launched a telescope called New Horizons which got to pluto in 2015 travelling at about 30,000 miles an hour. you can see some of the pictures it took here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-top-10-pluto-pics

      if Usain Bolt ran at full speed (45 km an hour) it’d take him about ten thousand years to run there. it’d be a waste of effort though because i don’t think there’s much on pluto.

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