Miles Per Second to Meters Per Second (mi/s to m/s)

1 mile per second equals 1,609.344 meters per second exactly.

1 mile per second = 1,609.344 meters per second

How to convert miles per second to meters per second

To convert miles per second to meters per second, multiply the number of miles per second by 1,609.344. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply meters per second by 0.0006213711922 (rounded).

meters per second = miles per second × 1,609.344

Example: 10 miles per second = 16,093.44 meters per second.

About these units

Mile Per Second (mi/s)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 1,609.344 m/s. Used for very high speeds.

Spaceflight speeds are where mile per second appears. Escape velocity from Earth's surface is 11.186 km/s, which is about 6.95 mi/s, found by dividing 11,186 m/s by 1,609.344 m. From the Moon the figure is 2.38 km/s, or about 1.48 mi/s, and a low Earth orbit at 7.7 km/s is about 4.8 mi/s, about 69 percent of the Earth escape figure.

The international mile is exactly 1,609.344 m, so one mile per second is exactly that many meters per second, and NIST lists the conversion as exact. It is also 5,793.6 km/h, and one meter per second is therefore about 0.00062 mi/s. NIST cautions that mile per second is not among the units it generally uses in its own publications.

1 mile per second = 1,609.344 meters per second (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Escape velocity; NIST SP 811 Appendix B.8: conversion factors; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (speed)

Meter Per Second (m/s)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of speed. Walking pace is about 1.4 m/s; a sprinter reaches roughly 10 m/s.

Official standing arrived in 1960, when the CGPM established the SI and made the meter per second the unit for speed and velocity. Before that, feet per second, miles per hour and knots were more common, depending on region and trade. One proposal gave 1 m/s its own name, the benz, after Karl Benz, but it was rejected and never caught on, so the unit is still written as a plain ratio of meter to second.

The meter is now defined by the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, and the second by the vibration of caesium atoms, so the meter per second rests on two physical standards. Exactly 3.6 km/h make 1 m/s, and it equals about 2.2369 mph or 1.9438 knots. For scale, sound travels at about 343 m/s in dry air at 20 °C, and Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 reached about 361 m/s, Mach 1.06, in October 1947. Physics and engineering use the unit almost exclusively.

The meter per second is the reference unit for speed on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Metre per second; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Sound barrier

Related conversions

See all speed units.