Many people sometimes look at the starry sky at night and wonder what it would be like to float around in that endless emptiness. More than 600 people have already gone into space, but one of the most striking things in our solar system is Elon Musk’s Tesla Model 3 and the vehicle driver: Starman.
It’s been five years since the controversial Twitter owner’s car went into space as part of the first Falcon Heavy test launch. Why the Tesla? SpaceX needed a fake payload for the test, and Musk wanted to do “the craziest thing imaginable.” Nice and crazy, launching a car worth about 130 thousand dollars into space. But then the question is, of course: where is that car now?
How can we track the Tesla Model 3 in space?
Thanks to the website whereisroadster.com, you can now track the location of Elon Musk’s Tesla at any time of the day. The website was founded in 2018 by Ben Pearson out of enthusiasm for the launch of the Starman and his car. The question of where Starman was in space was getting bigger and bigger.
The website uses data from the California Institute of Technology’s JPL Horizons System to calculate the location of the Tesla Model 3. The script that performs the calculations compares the available data from Starman’s course with the data from this system. According to Pearson, the data will become less and less accurate because Starman can no longer be seen, and the Horizons System cannot change it.
What do we now know about the Tesla Model 3?
Although we no longer know anything about Tesla and its driver, the website can still provide us with interesting data. At the time of writing, for example, it can be seen that the electric car is approaching the Earth at a speed of just over 14,000 kilometers per hour. Don’t worry; the chances are very small that Musk’s car will come to their parental home for coffee after his vacation in space.
A team of scientists has investigated the possibility, who say there is only a 6 percent chance that the Tesla Model 3 will hit Earth within a million years. Drink your coffee yourself.
Now that the shock of a crash is gone, you can also look at other intriguing data. For example, the Tesla has traveled as much distance in space as if you drove 63.4 times on all roads on Earth. Or this: when the Falcon Heavy was launched, Starman listened to Space Oddity (David Bowie).
If the battery still worked, the doll would have listened to the song about 498 thousand times. ( Is there Life On Mars? played in the puppet’s other ear, which now stands at about 671,000 times).
What does the future of Starman and his Tesla?
Unfortunately, we can no longer see exactly where the Tesla Model 3 is. However, research has been completed into the possibility of plucking the car from space in about thirty years and putting it in a museum.
We may see this explorer sometime in the future. However, there must be something left of it, of course.
