What is the travel distance between Earth and Mars?
However, since current Earth spacecraft burn and coast into an elliptical orbit around the sun such that Mars’ gravity will catch the spacecraft; the travel distance to Mars is less than about half of the circumference of Mar’s orbit, or about 715 million kilometers, and more than about half of the circumference of the Earth’s orbit, or about 470 million kilometers. Differences in designs of spacecraft can change these numbers drastically. Hence it is usually easier to simply refer to the direct line-of-sight distance between the planets.
