Remember when Elon Musk spectacularly launched a Tesla into space as part of a scientific experiment?
How you could forget – especially when it was his own personal $100,000 Tesla Roadster that he shot into space.
Well, it’s still out there – or up there, to be exact.
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Back in 2018, the Tesla was sent on a trip beyond our atmosphere, while acting as a ‘dummy payload’ for the first mission of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.
At the launch, Elon Musk himself predicted it only had a 50/50 chance at succeeding, as his waved goodbye to his ride.
Thankfully, it wasn’t his daily – he actually revealed the specific Tesla model he drives every day recently.
Anyhow, someone has created a dedicated website named ‘Where is Roadster?‘ to monitor the car’s progress.
At the time of writing (Monday, 11 December), the current location is 61,629,796 miles (99,183,573 km, 0.663 AU, 5.51 light minutes) from Earth, moving away from Earth at a speed of 10,309 mi/h (16,591 km/h, 4.61 km/s).
The website also details extra insights into the Roadster’s journey, including the fact that the vehicle has now traveled far enough to drive all of the world’s roads 71.8 times.
It’s also achieved a fuel economy of 22,762.4 miles per gallon (9,677.3 km/liter), assuming 126,000 gallons of fuel.
According to the website, the car even has a potential soundtrack as it journeys around space for its ‘passenger’, a mannequin named Starman.
“If the battery was still working, Starman has listened to Space Oddity 576,764 times since he launched in one ear, and to Is there Life On Mars? 777,165 times in his other ear,” the website states.
Elon and his team added Starman to the Tesla Roadster, with one of the mannequin’s hands firmly on the steering wheel and the words ‘Don’t Panic’ etched into the dashboard.
If you’re wondering if there’s any chance the car could impact Earth some day, researchers have already looked into it.
Apparently, the odds are just six percent within a million years, so we no need to worry about the vehicle coming crashing down any time soon.
The closest the Roadster and Starman will get to Earth will be in 2091, when it will come within a couple of hundred thousand miles of our planet – that’s if they’re still going strong in 70 years.
