If you could somehow hitch a ride on the NASA Parker Solar Probe, you could travel from Los Angeles to London in approximately 49 seconds.
The probe - which uses an array of sensors to measure various parts of the sun - recently clocked a speed of 394,736 miles, or 635,266 kilometers, per hour - making it the fastest object ever made by humans. The probe achieves its amazing speeds with a mixture of timing and precision. It orbits the sun and lines up with the orbit of Venus. It then uses Venus' gravity as a sort of slingshot to launch itself back at the sun once again.
The Parker Solar Probe - which was launched in August 2018 with the mission of making observations of the outer corona of the Sun - is likely to break its own record next year, when it is predicted to be hurtling through space at around 430,000 miles per hour.
The probe can already fly around the Earth's equator in a little less than 4 minutes. It's also faster than anything orbiting Earth. For example, the International Space Station travels at 17,000 mph, which is leisurely by comparison.
All these human-made items still have a way to go before they can approach the speeds of the greater cosmos, though. The star S4714 zooms along at around 15,000 miles per second, or about 5.4 million miles per hour, thanks to its tight orbit around a black hole.
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