How long would it take to get to Uranus?
Data as of July 2026
326 yearsby jet, without stopping
Uranus comes within 2,570 million km of Earth at closest approach. In a straight line at airliner speed that's 326 years of continuous flight. The fastest spacecraft ever launched would need 5.0 years.
▶ See how far Uranus really is
The honest timetable
Family car (100 km/h)
2,932 years
Jet airliner (900 km/h)
326 years
New Horizons: fastest launch ever (58,500 km/h)
5.0 years
Light (299,792 km/s)
2.4 hours
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. Voyager 2, still the only spacecraft to visit, took 8½ years to fly past in January 1986.
Its 98° axial tilt means each pole spends ~42 years in continuous sunlight, then 42 years in darkness.
See the gap for yourself: open Uranus 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 Found something out of date?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.