With so much talk about space travel, it’s easy to forget how vast the solar system and the universe are. In movies, spacecraft travel faster than light, which is impossible, and reach their destinations in minutes. In real life, space travel takes time.
It’s possible to reach the Moon in a few days; however, a future trip to Mars will take up to nine months. A round trip will take more than 3 years because the alignment of Earth and Mars creates a launch window about once every 26 months. Add nine months, nine months, and 26 months, and you get 44 months. How about traveling to Mercury? Two unmanned spacecraft are on the way and are expected to arrive in a few months.
Mercury is the least explored of our inner planets, but a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was launched in 2018. In April of next year, the two probes are scheduled to arrive near Mercury to gather observations. So, after eight years in space, the BepiColombo project will again demonstrate that space travel takes time.
On September 1, 2026, a nonprofit organization called the Fermi Explorer Mission (FEM) announced plans to send a probe toward Alpha Centauri by 2029. Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri are the closest stars to our Sun. But “close” is hardly the right word, since they’re actually 4.4 light-years away. Because spacecraft cannot reach light speed, this probe is expected to arrive in 80,000 years. If it launches in 2029, arrives 80,000 years later, gathers information, and sends a strong enough signal to be received on Earth, the signal will take 4.4 years to arrive.
If FEM’s plan works, will anyone be alive to receive the information it gathers? Space travel takes time, and human life spans are short. The Fermi Explorer Mission team is a nonprofit organization, and they’re asking for financial donations to get the mission off the ground. This is definitely a long-term investment.
Knowing that space travel takes time, I think God has given us a beautiful planet where we have been richly blessed. He has also given us a curiosity to want to know what’s out there. What is out there is a massive, incomprehensible universe that we will never fully explore or understand. We can also never fully understand God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—which we can clearly see in the things He has made (Romans 1:20).
— Roland Earnst © 2026
Reference: Space.com