Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster Has Made A Full Year In Space

The Falcon Heavy rocket has just completed a full year orbiting. On February 6, 2018, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the rocket into space as well as sent the Tesla Roadster of Elon Musk off to fly through the cosmos to the tune of David Bowie's Space Oddity. The car carries along a Starman dummy in a spacesuit, which sits behind the wheel.

Programmer Ben Pearson volunteers to track down the journey of Tesla around the Sun. He shows his work on the website Where is Roadster? that he runs by himself. Let’s see the newest data.

Pearson’s calculation for Wednesday morning shows that Tesla electric car is 364,393,544 kilometers away from Earth and 263,168,899 kilometers away from Mars.

Although the Roadster has a warranty for only 58,000 kilometers, the electric car has already traveled 13,000 times farther than that.

Screenshot from Where is Roadster

If its battery is still working well, Starman has listened to Space Oddity more than 99,000 times.

The car is expected to come close to the Earth, but that won’t happen before 2091. At that time, SpaceX may send a Starship to pick up the Roadster and take it home. If that happens, Starman will show us whether or not it survived the harsh condition in outer space.

While SpaceX had launched rockets before, the Falcon Heavy was the first to carry a payload along, which is up to 63,800 kilograms – equivalent to a pair of humpback whales. The rocket was named after Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s ride in Star Wars.

Launched over a year ago, the rocket measures 70 meters in height, though not the largest, still impressive. SpaceX also designed this rocket so that it can be reused, allowing controlled landings. Notably, different from a typical rocket test, which involves a concrete block, Elon Musk got bored and replaced that with a Tesla Roadster, along with Starman – a dummy astronaut.