Where Is Elon Musk's $100K Roadster He Sent To Space A Year Ago?

we've sent a lot of unusual things space guitars AI robots even a golden record but none of that compares to what Elon must send up at the start of 2018 his very own $100,000 cherry-red convertible Tesla Roadster with the top down and a dummy at the wheel listening to David Bowie strapped to the most powerful operational rocket in the world no less the Falcon Heavy since its launch a year ago it's probably safe to say the Roadster is traveled farther than any other car in history in fact it's estimated to be about equal to driving every single Road in the world 22 times so the question is where exactly is it right now the roadster is traveling through space at thousands of kilometers per hour faster than most fighter jets but unlike a jet the roadster isn't burning any fuel because it doesn't have to when SpaceX's Falcon heavy rocket launched on February 6 2018 it gave the sports car an initial boost and speed sort of like a slingshot that's been powering it through space ever since and by November that boost got it all the way to Mars but Mars is just the first stop of many the roadster is currently on an elliptical path around the Sun taking it past Venus and Mercury - it completes one full orbit about every five hundred fifty seven days and a scheduled to finish its first orbit before the end of 2019 now if nothing unexpected happens like miniature asteroid strike that could pummel the car to pieces researchers predict that the roadster will orbit the Sun for the next few million years sadly it's too small and too far away to see in the night sky even with the aid of a telescope but eventually it will make its way back to Earth a team out of the University of Toronto projected the roadsters orbit decades into the future they discovered that in the year 2019 one it will likely pass close enough to earth that we'll be able to see it through a powerful telescope like the pan-starrs telescope in Hawaii but if you don't want to wait that long you can easily track the Roadster online fans like Ben Pearson use NASA data to project the cars location through space for now the convertible will continue its long drive around our inner solar system and perhaps if humans make it to Mars like musk hopes we might even see the Roadster on our way there

Channel: Tech Insider

Views: 2,499,081

Rating: 4.587688 out of 5

Keywords: Tech Insider, TI, Tech, Science, Innovation, Digital culture, elon musk, tesla, roadster, spacex, mars, earth, sun, moon, solar system, space, falcon heavy, rocket, spaceship, planet, planets, orbit, gravity

Id: 0yIf9t2QgDw

Length: 3min 5sec (185 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sigmatics]

Don't need to watch a video for that: https://www.whereisroadster.com/

[u/gulgin]

Anyone want to do the math on figuring out how long it will take for the Roadster to travel as far as every previous vehicle in history combined?