How Far Away Is Each Planet Right Now?

The distance between Earth and every other planet changes constantly. Both planets are moving around the Sun at different speeds, so the gap between them stretches and shrinks by millions of kilometers over the course of a year. Mars can be as close as 54.6 million km or as far as 401 million km. That is a sevenfold difference, and it is why there is no single answer to “how far away is Mars?”

The calculator below computes the real distance from Earth to every planet, plus the Moon, the Sun and Pluto, for this exact moment. It uses the same published orbital elements that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides for approximate planetary positions, so the numbers you see are accurate to a fraction of a percent. Pick a destination and a speed, and it tells you how long the trip would take.

How Far Away Are the Planets from Earth?

Every planet’s distance from Earth swings between a minimum and a maximum. The minimum happens when both planets line up on the same side of the Sun, and the maximum when they sit on opposite sides. This table shows the full range for every destination in the calculator, along with how long light takes to cover the shortest gap.

Astronomers usually give these distances in astronomical units (AU). One AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun, 149.6 million km. Mars orbits at 1.52 AU from the Sun, Neptune at 30 AU and Pluto swings between 30 and 49 AU.

Why Planet Distances Constantly Change

Each planet moves along its own orbit at its own pace. Mercury completes a lap around the Sun in 88 days, Earth in 365, and Neptune needs 165 years. Because the laps take different amounts of time, the planets keep catching up to and pulling away from each other, like runners on different tracks of a stadium.

The moments when Earth catches up to an outer planet are called oppositions, and they are when that planet is closest, biggest in a telescope and brightest in the sky. Mars reaches opposition roughly every 26 months. Jupiter and Saturn reach it about once a year, because Earth laps them quickly while they crawl along their enormous orbits. For the inner planets it works in reverse: Venus passes between Earth and the Sun every 584 days, and that is when it comes nearer to us than any other planet ever does.

Orbits are also ellipses rather than circles, which is why the record close approaches make headlines. In August 2003, Mars came within 55.8 million km of Earth, nearer than it had been in almost 60,000 years, because the close pass happened while Mars was also near the point of its orbit closest to the Sun.

How Far Is Mercury From Earth?

Mercury sits between 77.3 million and 221.9 million km from Earth. Because it hugs the Sun on an 88-day orbit, it swings between its closest and farthest points faster than any other planet.

A surprising consequence of that tight orbit: averaged over time, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth. Venus comes nearer at its best, but it also spends long stretches on the far side of the Sun, while Mercury never strays far from the middle of the solar system.

Getting there is harder than the distance suggests. A spacecraft falling toward the Sun picks up enormous speed, and shedding that speed to enter orbit takes years of flybys. MESSENGER needed six and a half years to settle into orbit around Mercury, and BepiColombo, launched in 2018, spent seven years on the way.

How Far Is Venus From Earth?

Venus approaches within 38.2 million km of Earth, closer than any other planet, and recedes to 261 million km when it moves behind the Sun. Light covers the shortest gap in just over two minutes.

Venus was the target of the first successful interplanetary mission. Mariner 2 flew past it in December 1962 after a 110-day cruise. At the speed of a commercial jet, the same trip at closest approach would take almost five years of non-stop flying.

How Far Is Mars From Earth?

Mars ranges from 54.6 million km at a perfect close approach to 401.4 million km when the two planets sit on opposite sides of the Sun. On an average day the gap is around 225 million km, which means a radio signal takes about 12 minutes each way. That lag is why rovers drive themselves instead of being steered live from Earth.

In a straight line at Voyager 1’s speed, the closest gap could be covered in about 37 days. Real Mars missions take around seven months. Spacecraft do not fly straight at the planet; they follow a curved transfer orbit that swings around the Sun and arrives where Mars will be, not where it is at launch. Perseverance made the trip in 203 days. Crewed mission plans, including SpaceX’s Starship architecture, assume a similar six-to-nine-month cruise, which is only possible during a launch window that opens for a few weeks every 26 months.

How Far Is Jupiter From Earth?

Jupiter orbits 5.2 AU from the Sun, which puts it between 588.5 million and 968.5 million km from Earth. Sunlight reflected off its cloud tops takes at least 33 minutes to reach us.

Jupiter marks the point where trip times jump from months to years. Voyager 1, the fastest of the classic probes, reached it in 18 months. Juno, which had to arrive slowly enough to enter orbit, took almost five years. Driving there at highway speed would take 671 years, longer than the time separating us from the Middle Ages.

How Far Is Saturn From Earth?

Saturn lies between 1.2 and 1.66 billion km from Earth. Even at its closest, light needs more than an hour to make the trip, so every view of Saturn through a telescope shows the planet as it was over an hour ago.

Cassini, the only spacecraft to orbit Saturn, launched in 1997 and arrived in 2004, using flybys of Venus, Earth and Jupiter to pick up speed along the way. Voyager 1 made the fastest trip, just over three years, but it was a flyby that kept going.

How Far Is Uranus From Earth?

Uranus orbits 19.2 AU from the Sun and stays between 2.57 and 3.15 billion km from Earth. It is the most distant planet visible to the naked eye, though only barely, under dark skies, if you know exactly where to look.

Only one spacecraft has ever visited. Voyager 2 flew past in January 1986, eight and a half years after launch. At the speed of light the trip takes about two and a half hours. In the calculator above, pick Uranus and the highway car preset to see why nobody is planning a road trip: about 3,000 years.

How Far Is Neptune From Earth?

Neptune, the outermost planet, sits between 4.3 and 4.7 billion km from Earth. Its distance barely changes in relative terms, because Earth’s entire orbit is small compared with Neptune’s 30 AU circle around the Sun. Light takes about four hours to cross the gap.

Voyager 2 remains the only visitor, arriving in August 1989 after a twelve-year journey. The probe used a rare alignment of the outer planets that let it slingshot from Jupiter to Saturn to Uranus to Neptune, an opportunity that comes around once every 175 years.

How Far Is Pluto From Earth?

Pluto’s stretched, tilted orbit carries it between 4.28 and 7.5 billion km from Earth. It is currently moving away from the Sun and will keep doing so until the year 2113. Its orbit is eccentric enough that from 1979 to 1999 it was actually closer to the Sun than Neptune.

New Horizons made the only visit, launching in January 2006 as the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth and still needing nine and a half years to get there. The missions to Pluto page covers that journey in detail. Because Pluto is so far along its orbit’s outbound leg, distances in the calculator above are approximate to about one percent.

How Long Would It Take to Travel to Each Planet?

The calculator uses eight speeds, from a highway car to light itself. Each one is a real, documented speed rather than a guess:

• Speed of light (1.08 billion km/h): the universe’s hard limit. Nothing with mass reaches it, and even light needs hours to cross the outer solar system.
• Parker Solar Probe (690,000 km/h): the fastest human-made object ever, reached while diving close to the Sun in 2024. At this speed Mars at its closest is 3.3 days away.
• Voyager 1 (61,200 km/h): the speed at which the farthest human-made object is leaving the solar system, almost 50 years after launch.
• New Horizons (58,500 km/h): the fastest launch ever. It passed the Moon’s orbit in nine hours. Apollo astronauts needed three days to cover the same distance.
• Apollo 10 (39,897 km/h): the fastest any human beings have ever traveled, set during re-entry from the Moon in May 1969.
• SpaceX Starship (27,000 km/h): roughly the speed of a spacecraft cruising after escaping Earth orbit.
• Commercial jet (900 km/h): about 18 days to the Moon, 19 years to the Sun and five and a half centuries to Pluto.
• Highway car (100 km/h): 160 days of non-stop driving to reach the Moon.

One caveat applies to every number the calculator produces: real spacecraft cannot fly in a straight line. They launch into curved transfer orbits shaped by the Sun’s gravity, timed so the spacecraft and the destination arrive at the same point together. That path is always longer than the straight line, and for missions that need to slow down and enter orbit, the cruise is slower too. The straight-line time is the physical lower bound at a given speed, and the mission times quoted through this article show how much the curve costs in practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which planet is closest to Earth?

Venus makes the closest approaches, coming within 38.2 million km. Averaged over time, though, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth, because its tight orbit keeps it near the Sun, and therefore near the center of everyone else’s orbit, all year round. It is also, on average, the closest planet to every other planet in the solar system.

How long does it take to get to Mars?

Real missions take six to nine months, following a curved transfer orbit rather than a straight line. Perseverance made the trip in 203 days. The calculator’s straight-line figure at any speed is a lower bound, not a flight plan.

How far away is the Sun?

The Sun averages 149.6 million km from Earth, the distance astronomers define as one astronomical unit. Earth’s orbit is slightly elliptical, so the true figure moves between 147.1 million km in early January and 152.1 million km in early July. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach us.

What is the farthest humans have traveled from Earth?

The crew of Apollo 13 hold the record. In April 1970 their free-return path swung 254 km above the far side of the Moon while the Moon was near its farthest from Earth, putting them 400,171 km from home. No human has been beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Could humans really travel to another planet?

Mars is the only realistic candidate with current technology, and the seven-month cruise is the manageable part. The harder problems are radiation exposure, carrying enough supplies and landing something heavy enough to keep a crew alive. NASA’s Artemis program and SpaceX’s Starship are both built as stepping stones toward a crewed Mars attempt, with the 2030s as the earliest serious target.

If you enjoy tools like this one, find out what the Moon looked like on your birthday or test yourself with our name-the-planets quiz. For a refresher on the planets themselves, start with the full list of planet names.