On this day seven years ago, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy Girl Flight, a rocket for heavy and deep space missions with a special payload: Cherry Red 2008 Tesla Roadster owned by Elon Musk . The sports car is permanently mounted on the Rockets’ upper stage and has a dummy in its driver’s seat called “starman”. The car disappeared from the telescope about a month after its release last month.
On January 2, the Secondary Planetary Center (MPC) of the Harvard Astrophysics Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, collected data on small and medium-sized objects in the solar system and announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid designated as 2018 CN41 CN41. Submitted by citizen scientists, the object drifts at an altitude of 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometers) above the Earth, classifying it as a near-Earth object (NEO) that has to be monitored for its future collision with our planet potential.
A few hours later, with the help of professional and amateur astronomers, MPC discovered that this was not an asteroid, but Tesla Roadster entered space seven years ago. According to a note released by MPC on January 3, the car is still installed on the Falcon Heavy Rockets’ on-stage.
Tracking the position of the convertible sports car in space has become an annual curiosity. Simulation sites such as where suradster.com estimate the real-time location of a vehicle based on NASA data. According to the location, the vehicle is currently moving from Earth to Mars.
according to SpaceX’s own calculationsthe sports car completed its first orbit around the sun in August 2019 and made its first approach to Mars on October 7, 2020.
According to NASA, the roadster will float in the solar system for millions of years unless it falls into Earth or Mars. However, over time, the effects of solar and cosmic radiation and micrometrics can damage the vehicle. In 2019, Musk Tweet SpaceX may one day launch a small spacecraft to catch up with the sports car, take pictures, and even bring it back to Earth for research.
Musk at the 2018 sports car launch conference Odd number of space In one ear Life on Mars? Another on the journey. If his battery is still working, then now the dummy will listen to these two songs, which have been nearly a million times so far.
