I thought, wow 500+ AUs away... that should be halfway to the next star... but it’s not.
500AU = .0079 light years. Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away. Pluto is 29 AU from the Sun, and it took New Horizon 9 years to get to Pluto.
Even our own Solar System is big, darn big.
New Horizons entered directly into an Earth and Sun escape trajectory after launching on 19 January 2006 at a velocity of 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), making it the fastest spacecraft to ever leave Earth orbit, 100 times faster than a jetliner.
After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007 at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons ' speed by 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph).