How long would it take a spacecraft to reach the nearest galaxy? How long it would take a spacecraft to travel to the nearest galaxy depends on how fast it is traveling, however the general answer is a very very long time. The nearest galaxies to us are the two irregular galaxies called the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. The nearest large galaxy is the spiral galaxy Andromeda. Here are their distances from us: Large Magellanic Cloud - 179 thousand light years away Small Magellanic Cloud - 210 thousand light-years away Andromeda Galaxy - 2.9 million light-years away One light year is the distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum at a speed of 186,000 miles per second or about 5,880,000,000,000 miles! So, you can see that even the nearest galaxies are incredibly far away from us.