The Earth will travel this Wednesday, January 3, at a much higher speed than usual: 110,700 kilometers per hour, 3,420 kilometers per hour faster than it usually does (107,280). It is not an extraordinary phenomenon, but it occurs every year at perihelion, the moment in which the planet is placed at the shortest distance from the Sun in its orbit.
At that moment, our distance from the Sun will be just over 147 million kilometers, that is, about 5 million kilometers less than at the moment of greatest distance (aphelion), which will occur on July 5, 2024, according to the National Astronomical Observatory (OAN).
The Earth rotates around the Sun, describing an elliptical orbit of 930 million kilometers, at an average speed of 107,280 kilometers per hour. What is normal and what it means to travel the distance in 365 days and almost 6 hours, hence every four years a leap year is counted, in the case of 2024.
But, according to Kepler’s second law, this translation speed varies, increasing until it is maximum at perihelion. When that happens, the Earth accelerates and reaches 110,700 kilometers per hour. This happens because the line connecting the planets and the Sun covers the same area in the same amount of time, which means that when the planets are close to the Sun in their orbit, they move faster than when they are further away.
According to Earth Sky, the 2024 perihelion will occur at 01:00 UTC on January 3 (04:00 AM in Spain), with a distance of just over 147 million kilometers.
Thus, the orbital speed of a planet will be lower the further it is from the Sun, during aphelion, when the Earth will be about five million kilometers further away and will be moving at 152.09 million kilometers per hour.
