What is the fastest speed a spacecraft has gone?

Answer 1

Fastest Orbital Speed (also Fastest Manmade Object) Helios 2 in orbit around the Sun ~ 150,000 mph (241,350 km/h) 17 April 1976

Fastest Atmospheric Entry Galileo during terminal dive into Jupiter 108,000 mph (173,770 km/h) 21 September 2003

Fastest Planetary Flyby Pioneer 11 during closest approach to Jupiter 107,500 mph (173,000 km/h) 2 December 1974

Fastest Solar Escape Velocity (or Fastest Interstellar Speed) Voyager 1 38,600 mph (62,100 km/h) circa 1981 to present

Fastest Earth Escape Velocity New Horizons 35,800 mph
(57,600 km/h) 19 January 2006

Fastest Earth Atmospheric Entry Stardust Sample Return Capsule 29,000 mph (46,660 km/h) 15 January 2006

Answer 2

Fastest Manned Spacecraft

Answer 3

Nothing with mass can ever even reach the speed of light, much less surpass it. It's not about Einstein being wrong. It's pretty simple math, that has been confirmed time and again by hundreds of physicists, not just Einstein. And not just theoretically, but experimentally also. Do you not remember the uproar a year or 2 ago because they thought they'd found neutrinos traveling faster than light? Then it all ended up just being an error in the measurements. The closer you get to the speed of light the more energy is needed to accelerate. Until the point that it takes an infinite amount of energy to actually reach the speed of light (for any object with mass). There is no such thing as infinite energy, so obviously that's not possible. Even if you took all the energy in the universe that would be a whole lot, but it still wouldn't be infinite. Never mind the fact that there would be no way of harnessing, much less using, all that energy. Even if you could though that is just reaching the speed of light. Going past it, still impossible. The only way that ever even might be possible is by manipulating space itself. Space can move as fast as it wants. Edit: "we have never reached anywhere near the speed of light". Wrong. What do you think particle accelerators do on an almost daily basis?

Answer 4

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/6Xy8k

No, the acceleration isn't linear. If one can get you 20% of the speed of light 2 will not get you 40%, it doesn't work that way. You need an exponentially greater amount of energy to reach the speed of light. I didn't read Nathaniel's comment but your additional details are based on the assumption we never reached anywhere near the speed of light, that's simply not true. We have accelerated particles to close to the speed of light in a particle accelerator. Which is easier to throw a pebble or to throw a mountain? If we know how much energy is required to accelerate an electron to a significant proportion of the speed of light what makes you think it would be easier to accelerate a space ship to that speed? Einstein's theories of both special and general relativity have been extensively tested experimentally and do appear to be extremely robust. Edit: I have now read Nathaniel's answer, you were referring to the discrepancy between the change in the passage of time between two reference frames in motion relative to each other. This time dilation effect has been observed experimentally also. Atomic clocks have been taken on aircraft and circumnavigated the world in both directions and brought back together to a point where a third atomic clock was waiting all the time and the difference in time between the atomic clocks were exactly as Einstein predicted. Also short lived sub atomic particles appear to live much longer when travelling close to the speed of light than they should do in a resting frame, again by the amount Einstein's theories predict. The only thing I can find wrong with Nathaniel's post is he almost certainly meant to say 4.5 years would have passed for the rest of the universe not 1 year since Alpha Centauri is 4.5 light years away but the thrust of his argument is sound.

Answer 5

The fastest manned spacecraft was Apollo 10 at 39,896 km/h (11.1 km/s).

The fastest unmanned spacecraft was one of the Helios probes with a recorded speed of 252,792 km/h (70.2 km/s).

Answer 6

Einstein said that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. However, I heard on the news a few months ago that some scientists made some kind of light energy travel faster than light which travels which 186,280+ miles per second.

Answer 7

mine can do 50,000 mpsec

Answer 8

340.29 m / s (concorde planes)