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The average from Earth to the moon is about 3.84 x 10⁵ km, and the distance from Earth to Mars is appropriately 9.24 x 10^7 in year 2014. On this simplistic level, how much farther is traveling from Earth to Mars than from the moon.

User JHoffmann
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Final answer:

Traveling from Earth to Mars is 5566.16 × 10⁵ km farther than traveling from Earth to the Moon, highlighting the vast difference in distances within our solar system.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question asks for the difference in distance between traveling from Earth to the Moon and traveling from Earth to Mars. Earth to the Moon is approximately 3.84 × 10⁵ km, while the distance from Earth to Mars during the closest approach is about 5.6 × 10⁷ km. To find out how much farther traveling from Earth to Mars is than from Earth to the Moon, we need to subtract the Earth-Moon distance from the Earth-Mars distance.

First, let's align the orders of magnitude:

Earth to Moon distance: 3.84 × 10⁵ km
Earth to Mars distance: 5.6 × 10⁷ km

Since we are using the scientific notation, we can subtract these numbers by converting them to the same power of ten:

Earth to Mars distance (in terms of 10⁵ km): 5.6 × 10⁷ km = 5600 × 10⁵ km

Now, we subtract the Earth-Moon distance from this value:

5600 × 10⁵ km - 3.84 × 10⁵ km = 5566.16 × 10⁵ km

This means that traveling from Earth to Mars is 5566.16 × 10⁵ km farther than traveling from Earth to the Moon.

User David Merinos
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