Do you still remember the Tesla Roadster with the Starman mannequin behind the wheel, which SpaceX sent into space in 2018? Elon Musk recently wrote on Twitter that the car is currently orbiting Mars, but he was a little wrong about that.
“Well, no.” It orbits the Sun and occasionally passes through the orbit of Mars. It’s not the same, ” he corrected it Jonathan McDowell z Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
McDowel calculated the trajectory of the electric car in question – still attached to its Falcon Heavy launch vehicle – and then published the following image showing its orbital trajectory:
Since it came up today: here is the current position of the Falcon Heavy 001 second stage, with Elon Musk’s Tesla bolted to its nose, together with the current positions of Earth and Mars. pic.twitter.com/HSFZveq6jJ
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) December 5, 2021
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He also said the rocket had stopped transmitting data a few days after its launch. “We determined the orbital elements soon after the launch. Kepler’s laws allow us to spread them to the present day, “he said.
In their responses to his posts, some users have expressed concern that the Roadster might one day collide with Mars, Earth or another planet. However, according to scientists, there is only a 6% chance that something like this will happen over the next million years.
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