starman roadster elon musk tesla

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, with Earth in background. “Starman” mannequin wearing SpaceX Spacesuit in driving seat. Camera mounted on external boom. Image via Wikimedia Commons

SpaceX: Starman ‘drove’ Elon Musk’s Tesla past Mars

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, ‘driven’ by Starman’, passed Mars over the weekend.

starman roadster elon musk tesla

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, with Earth in background. “Starman” mannequin wearing SpaceX Spacesuit in driving seat. Camera mounted on external boom. Image via Wikimedia Commons

SpaceX confirmed that Elon Musk’s Starman (driving a Tesla Roadster) was “last seen leaving Earth, made its first approach with Mars [on 8 October 2020]”.

Starman made its Martian approach “within 0.05 astronomical units, or under 5 million miles, of the Red Planet”. Starman was launched atop a Falcon Heavy rocket back in February 2018.

The spacesuited mannequin is expected to continue orbiting the sun as part experiment and part art project but its journey is far from over.

Starman spacetripping in a Tesla Roadster

Falcon Heavy demonstration

The launch was SpaceX’s first heavy-lift demonstration. It saw Musk launching his personal red Tesla Roadster into space, driven by a spacesuited mannequin known as Starman.

However, only the two side boosters landed successfully. The centre core missed its drone ship landing due to two of the three engines running out of igniter fluid.

At the time, Elon Musk confirmed that the core crashed and burned. He also added that it would be “pretty obvious” to fix. According to NASA, the 2018 launch of the Tesla Roadster “proved that the Falcon Heavy could deliver more valuable payloads to orbit.”

The Roadster’s current orbit

According to Where is Roadster, Starman (and its Tesla) was 57 952 728 km (0.387 AU or 3.22 light minutes) from Earth, “moving at a speed of 23 940 kilometres per hour; or  6.65 kilometres per second.

At the time of publishing, it’s been five days and eight hours since Starman’s approach of Mars. According to SpaceX, Starman got very close to the red planet, at least on an orbital scale.

Interestingly, the Roadster has now exceeded its 36 000 mile warranty 36 243 times while driving around the Sun.

“If the battery was still working, Starman has listened to David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ 265 919 times since he launched in one ear; and to ‘Is there Life On Mars?’ 358 314 times in his other ear.”

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy

Let’s take a moment to appreciate how impressive SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket really is. It’s not just one rocket. It’s one central Falcon 9 rocket with structural reinforcement and two additional Falcon 9s mounted on either side.

The mega-rocket has a dry mass of 3 520 kilograms and weighs approximately 6 000 kilograms when fully fueled. Lockheed Martin constructed the spacecraft, utilising the LM2100 satellite bus.

The rocket is capable of delivering a 63 800 kilogram payload to low Earth orbit. It can also deliver a 26 700 kilogram payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).

A GTO is an elliptical orbit used to transfer between two circular orbits of different radii in the same plane.

Will Musk’s Roadster ever return to Earth?

Researchers calculated that the Roadster will “have a fairly close encounter with Earth” in 2091. If Starman is ever to ‘set foot’ on Earth again, that would be the perfect time to send out a recovery craft.

Back in 2019, an orbit modelling study predicted a 6% chance of the Roadster crashing into Earth in the next one million years.

And if it doesn’t return to Earth, but is still cruising around space a few million years from now, it might eventually crash into Earth or Venus.