Headline Image caption & credit: An illustration of the planets in our Solar System and the missions sent to explore them. © Jenny Mottar / NASA. via RT: Astronomers have discovered a "celestial highway" to travel through the Solar System much faster than was previously possible. The development raises the prospect of rapidly sending crafts across vast swathes of space. The extraordinary superhighway network was discovered by an international team of researchers from Serbia and the United States. The routes can transport comets and asteroids nearly the distance from Jupiter to Neptune in under a decade and a staggering 100 astronomical units in less than a century. To break that down, one single astronomical unit is roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and is equal to about 150 million kilometers. The distance between Jupiter and Neptune is nearly 25 astronomical units. The scientists say the network could be used to send spacecraft to the far reaches of our planetary system