Has a spacecraft gone outside of the Milky Way Galaxy? If not, what is the farthest planet reached by a spacecraft?
1 Answer
No spacecraft has left the Solar System.
By current nomenclature the farthest planet reached is Neptune, and the dwarf planet Pluto.
Explanation:
Ok, your question needs some explanations.
First, you severely underestimate the size of things. Our solar system, made of the Sun, the planets and a lot of dust and ice, etc, has a radius of about 1 light year, or the distance light travels in 1 year. That is 9,460,730,472,581 kilometers or 5,879,882,207,943 miles. The Milky Way (our galaxy) is approximately 100,000 light years across, so it has a radius of 50,000 light years. The Sun is not at the center of the galaxy, but is about 26,000 light years from the center. Now for your question:
No, No man-made spacecraft has even left our solar system. The Voyager I probe, launched in 1977 is the craft that has gone the furthest out, but it is still crossing the boundaries of our solar system into interstellar space. It is pretty close, but not there yet, so it has not even crossed 1 light year distance.
Now, the last three planetary bodies in our Solar system are Uranus, Neptune and the dwarf planet Pluto. They were visited by the following probes on these dates:
Uranus, visited by Voyager 2 on January 26, 1986
Neptune, visited by Voyager 2 on August 25, 1989
Pluto, visited by New Horizons on July 14, 2015
