Five years ago, SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into space. Where is it now?
On 6 February 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla roadster and a spacesuit-clad mannequin into space onboard its Falcon Heavy rocket. Presuming that the harshness of space hasn't decimated the duo, the question is, where is the payload five years since its launch?
So far, the Roadster has already traveled more than 2.5 billion miles (4 billion km) in space - completing about 3.3 orbits around the Sun since launch. This is 70,000 times the distance for which Tesla's warranty is valid and the equivalent of driving all of the world's roads 63 times, the Roadster tracking website says.
Starman, who was provided with two pieces of music, one in each ear for the journey, may have listened to David Bowie's Space Oddity nearly 500,000 times and Is There Life on Mars over almost 670,000 times - assuming the car's battery is still working.
In fact, on its fifth anniversary, hurtling through space at over 16,000 miles per hour, the Roadster intersected Mars' orbit. However, the Red Planet was on the other side of the Sun. According to NASA, it won't be until 2035 that the car and its occupant will come close to Mars, but it will only be in 2047 and 2050 that it will come closest to Earth again.
