light-year, in astronomy, the distance traveled by light moving in a vacuum in the course of one year, at its accepted velocity of 299,792,458 metres per second (186,282 miles per second). Lightyear Zero is a Long-Range Solar Car Designed & Engineered by Lightyear in The Netherlands. Designed for Independence. A light year is a unit of astronomical distance that measures how far light travels in one year, which is about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. It's an essential concept in astrophysics and space exploration, allowing scientists to express vast distances between celestial objects like stars and galaxies. Understanding light years helps simplify the comprehension of the immense scales involved in the universe, making it easier to grasp the size and structure of the cosmos. A light year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in the span of one Earth year. Since light is the fastest thing in the universe, moving at a blistering pace of approximately 299,792 kilometers per second (or about 186,282 miles per second), it covers a truly vast distance in just one year.