How long would it take to get to Mercury?
9.8 yearsby jet, without stopping
Mercury comes within 77 million km of Earth at closest approach. In a straight line at airliner speed that's 9.8 years of continuous flight. The fastest spacecraft ever launched would need 55 days.
▶ See how far Mercury really is
The honest timetable
Family car (100 km/h)
88 years
Jet airliner (900 km/h)
9.8 years
New Horizons — fastest launch ever (58,500 km/h)
55 days
Light (299,792 km/s)
4.3 minutes
Those are straight-line times at the moment of closest approach — the absolute best case. Real spacecraft can't fly straight there: they follow long curved transfer orbits, sling around planets for free speed, and have to slow down at the other end. NASA’s MESSENGER needed 6½ years of looping flybys — not to catch Mercury up, but to slow down enough against the Sun’s pull to orbit it.
A solar day on Mercury (sunrise to sunrise) lasts two of its years. And it isn’t even the hottest planet.
See the gap for yourself: open Mercury in the interactive view, switch to 1:1 scale, and try to find Earth from there.
Keep going
✓ Facts verified July 2026
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.