With current technology at a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph (about 28,300 kph), it would have taken a Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
How about the Voyager spacecraft? These two unmanned space probes – Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 – were launched in 1977. They’re now heading out of our solar system. The Voyagers aren’t aimed toward Alpha Centauri, but if they were, they’d take tens of thousands of years to get there.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft travels at 36,373 miles per hour (58,536 km/h). If New Horizons were aimed toward the Alpha Centauri system, which it isn’t, it would take this spacecraft about 78,000 years to get there.
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