How Long Does It Take to Get to the Moon?

By Alexander Merz · Updated on 21 September 2026 · Details checked on 14 September 2026

There are three correct answers to this question – and they differ by more than a factor of ten. It depends on whether you fly past the Moon, orbit it or land on it.

Three numbers, three different goals

The difference between a flyby, an orbit and a landing is why you will find everything from ten hours to two weeks quoted online. All of those numbers are correct – they simply answer different questions.

A flyby is the fastest route because the spacecraft never has to slow down. It simply races past its target and keeps going.

An orbit requires a braking burn: the spacecraft has to slow down enough for the Moon’s gravity to capture it. A landing then adds further orbits, a descent and a controlled touchdown.

How long did Apollo 11 really take?

Apollo 11 launched on 16 July 1969 and entered lunar orbit after 75 hours and 50 minutes – just over three days and four hours. That is where the familiar “three days” figure comes from.

The lunar module Eagle, however, did not touch down until 102 hours and 45 minutes into the mission, at 20:17 UTC on 20 July. The landing itself therefore took a good four days and seven hours.

The whole mission at a glance – counted from launch on 16 July 1969 at 13:32 UTC:

Source: NASA, Apollo 11 Mission Overview. TLI = trans-lunar injection, LOI = braking burn into lunar orbit, TEI = the burn for the way home.

Why Apollo did not simply fly faster

Faster was possible – but only with considerably more propellant. And propellant is mass that the Saturn V would have had to lift as well.

There was also a safety argument: Apollo flew a free-return trajectory. If the engine failed, the Moon’s gravity would swing the capsule back towards Earth on its own.

That trajectory saved the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970. The travel time was not a technical limit but a decision in favour of safety.

Artemis 2: the most recent answer (April 2026)

Artemis 2 launched on 1 April 2026 – the first crewed lunar mission since 1972. On board: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

The Orion capsule passed the Moon on flight day six, 6 April 2026, at a closest approach of roughly 6,545 km above the surface. That put just over five days between launch and the Moon – longer than Apollo.

The full mission lasted 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes (NASA mission data). Along the way the crew set a record: at about 406,771 km, no humans had ever been farther from Earth.

Records: the fastest and the slowest way to the Moon

The record still belongs to the Pluto probe New Horizons. It launched on 19 January 2006 at 16.5 km/s and crossed the Moon’s orbit after 8 hours and 35 minutes.

The catch: New Horizons had no business at the Moon. It never slowed down and carried straight on towards the outer solar system.

At the other end sits the European probe SMART-1. Its ion drive needed more than a year – it spiralled away from Earth in ever wider loops instead of flying directly.

How long would it take to drive to the Moon?

At 384,400 km and 80 mph you would be on the road for 123 days – four months without a break, without refuelling, without sleep.

These comparisons are physically impossible, because neither wheels nor wings work in a vacuum. As a sense of scale, though, they do the job.

Those 1.28 seconds of light are not a gimmick but a measuring tool. Reflectors left on the Moon since Apollo 11 bounce laser pulses straight back to Earth.

The round-trip time gives the distance to within a few centimetres. That is also how we know the Moon drifts away from us by about 3.8 cm every year.

Why the distance itself keeps changing

The Moon does not travel on a circle but on an ellipse. At perigee, its closest point, it is about 356,500 km away; at apogee, its farthest, about 406,700 km.

That is a difference of more than 50,000 km – greater than the circumference of the Earth. With the same propulsion you therefore arrive noticeably sooner at perigee.

You can see the same swing in the sky: a full moon at perigee appears clearly larger as a supermoon than one at apogee.

How long does it take to reach Mars, the ISS and the Sun?

The Moon is by far the closest target – everything else is in a different league.

Why a Mars flight takes so much longer, and what decides the exact launch date, is covered in detail on our page How long does it take to fly to Mars?.

And if you want to know when the ISS next passes over your location, our pass table works it out for the coming seven nights.

Frequently asked questions about the flight time to the Moon

How long does a trip to the Moon take today?

Roughly three to five days, depending on the trajectory. Artemis 2 needed a good five days to its flyby in April 2026 because it flew a safe free-return path. A direct route into lunar orbit manages it in about three days.

How long does it take to fly to the Moon and back?

Apollo 11 was away for 8 days, 3 hours and 18 minutes, of which almost a full day on the surface and two and a half hours outside on the moonwalk. Artemis 2 came in at 9 days and 1 hour in 2026 without landing at all. A round trip therefore takes roughly a week and a half.

What is the fastest flight to the Moon?

NASA’s New Horizons probe crossed the Moon’s orbit in 2006 after only 8 hours and 35 minutes. It was travelling at 16.5 km/s and simply flew past without braking. No orbit or landing can match that time.

Why has nobody landed on the Moon since 1972?

The Apollo programme ended after Apollo 17 for budget reasons, not technical ones. Much of the knowledge and hardware had to be developed from scratch again for Artemis. The next landing is now planned for Artemis 4, no earlier than early 2028 – Artemis 3 will only practise docking with the landers in Earth orbit in 2027 (NASA).

How fast does a spacecraft travel to the Moon?

It leaves Earth orbit at roughly 39,000 km/h. That speed then drops steadily as Earth’s gravity pulls back – halfway there, an Apollo spacecraft was down to about 3,500 km/h. Only near the Moon does it pick up again.

How long does a radio signal take to reach the Moon?

1.28 seconds one way, so a good 2.5 seconds for a question and its answer. You can hear that delay clearly in the original Apollo recordings.