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The distance of a light year. How long would it take the space shuttle to go one light-year? The shuttle orbits the Earth at about 5 miles per second (18,000 mph). Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, which is about 37,200 times faster than the shuttle. So the shuttle would need about 37,200 years to go one light-year.
So a light year is about (I've rounded off a bit) 5,878,786,100,000 miles. That's almost 6 trillion miles. The distance from the earth to the Sun is 93 million miles. The distance to the nearest star is 4.3 light years, and the distance to the Andromeda galaxy is 2 million light years.ating Newest Oldest. Best Answer: A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. The speed of light is 186,287.5 miles per second. You can find out the number of seconds in a year by multiplying the number of seconds in a minute (60) by the number of minutes in an hour (60).