How long does it take to get to Mars?
Every robotic mission that has made it took between about 200 and 255 days. Not because engineers aim for seven or eight months, but because that is what the cheapest transfer orbit costs.
Updated on October 7, 2026
What real missions took
These are launch-to-arrival times for NASA missions, so they include nothing but the cruise. Orbiters and landers differ a little because arrival conditions differ.
| Mission | Launch | Arrival | days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Pathfinder | December 4, 1996 | July 4, 1997 | 212 |
| Mars Odyssey | April 7, 2001 | October 24, 2001 | 200 |
| Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | August 12, 2005 | March 10, 2006 | 210 |
| Curiosity (MSL) | November 26, 2011 | August 6, 2012 | 254 |
| InSight | May 5, 2018 | November 26, 2018 | 205 |
| Perseverance (Mars 2020) | July 30, 2020 | February 18, 2021 | 203 |
Source: NASA — Mars Exploration Program (durações reais de cruzeiro das missões)
Why roughly seven months, and only every 26 months
A spacecraft does not fly at Mars in a straight line; it is put into an ellipse around the Sun that touches Earth’s orbit at one end and Mars’s at the other. That Hohmann transfer is the cheapest route in fuel, and its geometry fixes the travel time at a bit over half the ellipse’s period — about 8.5 months in the textbook version, and 200 to 255 days in practice once you trade a little extra fuel for a faster arrival.
It only works if Mars is at the right place when you arrive, and the alignment repeats every 25.6 months, the synodic period of the two planets. Miss the window, which is a few weeks wide, and you wait more than two years. That is why 2020 saw three missions launch within eleven days of each other.
Source: NASA — Mars Exploration Program (durações reais de cruzeiro das missões)
And with people on board
A crewed mission has the same orbital mechanics but a much harder schedule. The usual conjunction-class profile is roughly six to nine months out, about 18 months waiting on Mars for the return window, and another six to nine months home: close to three years door to door. Shorter opposition-class trips cut the stay to a month or two but need far more propulsion and bring the crew closer to the Sun on the way back.
For comparison, a radio signal takes 3 to 22 minutes each way depending on where the planets are, so there is no real-time conversation with Mars, and no joystick control of a rover from Earth.
Source: NASA — Mars Exploration Program (durações reais de cruzeiro das missões)
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More about “How long does it take to get to Mars?”
The average of real trips
The six missions named on "How long does it take to get to Mars?" averaged 214 days from launch to arrival, ranging from 200 to 254 days. The gap between the fastest and the slowest is only a few weeks — small, for an interplanetary trip, because the Hohmann-transfer geometry leaves little room to choose.
Words on this page
Astronomical unit
The solar system’s reference distance, fixed at exactly 149,597,870,700 metres since 2012, close to the average Earth–Sun distance. It saves writing every planet’s orbit in kilometres with ten digits.
Standard definition by IAU — International Astronomical Union · Astronomical unit
Standard uncertainty
The margin attached to a measured value, usually written in parentheses on the last digits. A constant that is "exact by definition" has zero standard uncertainty; a measured one, like the gravitational constant G, always carries some.
Standard definition by BIPM — Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (SI) · Standard uncertainty
Exoplanet
A planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Most were found indirectly, by the star’s faint dimming as the planet crosses in front of it (transit) or by the gravitational wobble it causes in the star (radial velocity), not by direct image.
Standard definition by NASA Exoplanet Archive · Exoplanet
Launch window
The span of time in which a rocket can lift off and still reach its planned orbit or destination. For a trip to another planet that window can last only a few weeks and only returns at the next favourable alignment, so missing it costs months or years of waiting.
Mole
The SI counting unit for atoms, molecules or other entities: one mole is exactly 6.02214076 × 10²³ of them, by the definition fixed in 2019. It is what ties a mass in grams to a number of particles.
Standard definition by BIPM — Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (SI) · Mole