In February of 2018, Elon Musk along with his private company SpaceX sent the coolest thing into space we have ever seen – one of his own original Tesla Roadsters. Strapped to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy this car was one of Elon Musk’s first electric cars the inspired the future of Tesla and is the basis of the new soon-to-debut Tesla Roadster. It’s been over two years since this supercar was launched into orbit, but whatever happened to it?
This real-time simulation shows the current location of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster (with Starman behind the wheel) that was launched into space on February 6th 2018 on top of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. After being placed in an elliptical orbit between Earth and Mars, the Roadster would be picked up by Mars’ gravity and remain in orbit around it for (according to Musk) up to a billion years! Manuel Bojorquez reports on historic launch using new Falcon rocket with special payload (2-6-2018). The Roadster is in an orbit that appears to be on a path back toward Earth. However, According to CNET, which earlier reported on the launch anniversary, the Roadster won't reach a near-Earth. The Tesla Roadster completes one full orbit approximately every 557 days, but it is so small and so far away that even as it passes by us we won’t be able to see it even using a powerful telescope, but several decades from now we might be able to see it one time.
You can track the Roadster’s orbit
You can track the location of the Roadster’s orbit as it travels around the Earth, Sun, and outer planets. Inside of the Tesla Roadster one Mr. Starman is strapped in – but don’t worry, it’s not a real person or animal. Starman is a mannequin in charge of ‘piloting’ the Tesla Roadster as it orbits through space – after all, the original Tesla Roadsters didn’t come with autonomous driving capabilities either.
The Tesla Roadster completes one full orbit approximately every 557 days, but it is so small and so far away that even as it passes by us we won’t be able to see it even using a powerful telescope, but several decades from now we might be able to see it one time.
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Right now NASA scientists are tracking the car’s orbit through space, and a website called Where Is Roadster is constantly calculating the Roadster’s estimate fuel economy – if it was burning gas. The website also tells you how many times Starman would have listened to Space Oddity if the car’s batteries were still functional.
The future of this space-bound car
The Tesla Roadster will remain in space for the rest of the foreseeable future, though some scientists and engineers believe it will eventually crash back down to Earth sometime near the end of the century. There aren’t as many chemicals in space that would cause the car to degrade with time, and because the engine is obviously not running there is no stress on the car’s mechanical and electronic systems.
Unless the Roadster were to come in contact with space debris like an asteroid it is unlikely that it will meet its untimely end, but there is no true way to steer it away from obstacles or see exactly what is going on around the Roadster at any point in time.
Tesla Roadster Orbiting Mars
As far as we know right now, the Roadster is still traveling it’s projected orbit around the sun and the car and Starman are safe and sound.
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It’s a good thing the odometer doesn’t work on this Roadster, because it will easily be the highest-mileage car ever, and it has already traveled further than any car reasonably will in its lifetime.
There were plenty of spectacular moments during the maiden launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday.
But perhaps the most dramatic scene occurred about four minutes after liftoff: The second stage of the rocket, headed deeper into space, discarded the white nose cone at its tip.
It revealed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's cherry red sports car. Behind the wheel was a spacesuit-clad mannequin, named Starman. The car glided victoriously away from Earth as David Bowie's 'Life on Mars?' blared on SpaceX's launch webcast.
The car is not on some scientific voyage. This was a test launch, so SpaceX needed a dummy payload -- and Musk previously said he wanted it to be the '[s]illiest thing we can imagine.' So he picked his own luxurious Tesla roadster.
'I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future,' he said in December.
Shortly after the launch, SpaceX posted a live feed of Starman's journey. The images looked as if they were plucked from science fiction.
'I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible, and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly,' Musk said at a press conference Tuesday. 'We have way better CGI (computer-generated imagery)' than that.
The livestream, which was later viewed by millions of people, cut out after about four and a half hours when cameras' batteries died. Onlookers here on Earthmoved on with their lives.
But Starman and the Tesla are still out there, and late Tuesday the second-stage engine gave them a final boost, putting them on a path toward orbit around the sun.
More than likely, they will remain drifting through the vacuum of space for generations to come. Astronomers have been hard at work pinning down exactly what path they will take.
At first, Musk suggested on Twitter that the Tesla overshot its intended orbit and would fly out past Mars and into the asteroid belt.
But now experts say that probably won't happen.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory got its hands on data from SpaceX on Wednesday, and it suggests the roadster will stay closer to the sun. The farthest it will go is about 250 million kilometers from the sun, or about as far as Mars.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, says he also got a first-hand glimpse at the data and his analysis lines up with NASA's.
It'll reach its farthest point from the sun in November, and in September 2019, it will complete its first full loop around the sun. It'll continue to complete one full orbit about every 19 months.
Tesla Roadster Orbit
That's based on current projections, but things can always change.
'The problem now is that it's kind of difficult to predict how the orbit will evolve,' said Marco Langbroek, a space expert who tracks asteroids.
He said forces like solar radiation can slowly bump the roadster toward a different course, or leftover gas in the second-stage rocket could give it another heave.
By next week, astronomers say, the car will already be too far away from Earth to track with telescopes. So they're clamoring to get some good shots of the roadster now.
Tesla Roadster Orbit Around The Sun
Because of how the car's projected orbit aligns with Earth's orbit, astronomers on the ground probably won't be able to spot the roadster again until late in the 21st century. Based on calculations he made Thursday, Langbroek predicted that could happen in 2073. But in an email on Friday, he said it still seemed the car's path was 'too ill defined to make reliable forecasts.'
At that point, 'it's certainly possible that it will be mistaken for an asteroid,' he said. Astronomers will eventually be able to figure out its a man made object, however, by observing its 'orbit and behavior and brightness.'
Tesla Roadster Orbiting Mars
And NASA says the roadster has been added to is 'artificial object catalog' in an attempt to prevent this kind of confusion, according to Dwayne Brown, a senior communications official at NASA.
McDowell, half jokingly, predicts astronomers won't have to worry about it at all.
Tesla Roadster Orbiting Earth
By the late century, he said, he imagines humans will have already colonized other planets in the solar system -- and Musk's 'descendants will be able to drag [the roadster] back to a museum.'
Tesla Roadster Orbiting