Featured Image Credit: PR images / UPI / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Space, Technology
Emily Brown
Topics: Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Space, Technology
In 2018, Elon Musk showed off just how rich he is by sending his personal Tesla roadster into space. Five years on, he's still rich, and the Tesla is still floating about among the stars.
To be clear, the purpose of the Tesla's trip to space wasn't solely to show off Musk's wealth, but the fact he's able to quite literally wave goodbye to an expensive car doesn't exactly shy away from that fact, either.
The car was actually sent on a trip beyond our atmosphere while acting as a 'dummy payload' for the first mission of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy; a launch Musk himself predicted only had a 50/50 chance at succeeding.
Here's footage of the car in space:
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In spite of the concerns about the mission, it went off without any issues and the Tesla has been floating about in space ever since.
A dedicated website named Where Is Roadster has been set up to monitor the car's progress, and at this exact time of writing, on the afternoon of 7 February, it's located 203,276,831 miles from Earth and moving toward us at a speed of 6,646 mi/h.
The car is also positioned 280,272,712 miles from Mars and 136,725,234 miles from the Sun, though it is constantly changing as it continues its journey.
According to the site, the vehicle has traveled far enough in the last five years to drive all of the world’s roads 63.2 times, and achieved a fuel economy of 20,021.7 miles per gallon while doing so.
Although, to be fair, it's much easier to make your fuel last when you don't have traffic, hills or even gravity to contend with.
The Tesla is occupied by a mannequin dubbed Starman, which the site predicts could have listened to David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' 496,328 times in one ear, while listening to 'Is there Life On Mars?' 668,781 times in the other ear during his journey.
He's also completed about 3.2797 orbits around the Sun since launch.
While it's fun to imagine the inanimate spaceman floating in the red car and listening to some bangers, it's actually difficult to say whether the car is even still in one piece.
It's entirely possible that the vehicle might have been involved in a space-crash and struck by meteoroid, or even completely eroded as a result of radiation.
The data on the site is based on estimates of the car's trajectory, but since we can't say for sure either way, I suggest we stick with the more cheery image of the floating car, rather than a sad lump of metal left behind.