Time flies by as you float through cold and inhospitable outer space. Five years have passed since the first SpaceX tested his mighty Falcon Heavy rocket. The February 6, 2018 launch launched SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster into space. It’s still there.
A lot has happened since then. Twitter Mask. A lot of spacecraft development. Tons of Falcon 9 launches. More Falcon Heavy launches. All this time, the red car and a mannequin named Starman were orbiting the sun. Where is he now exactly? There is a handy site that will show you.
Whereisroadster.com tracks the whereabouts of Elon Musk’s car in space. This map from February 6, 2023 shows it crossing the orbit of Mars.
Ben Pearson/Whereisroadster.com
The website Whereestroadster.com has been operating since 2018 and tracks the journey of a car in space. Creator Ben Pearson noted that the Roadster was supposed to “cross the orbit of Mars for the fourth time since launch” as the car approached its fifth anniversary in space.
A car takes about 557 days to revolve around the sun. According to Pearson’s work, Tesla exceeded its 36,000-mile warranty by more than 70,050 times.
Researchers have already focused on the probability of a car colliding with the ground one day, and calculated the odds to be only 6% in a million years. The team also calculated that the roadster would make a close impact with Earth in 2091, when it would come within a few hundred thousand miles (several hundred thousand kilometers) of the planet where it was made.
Space is a tricky place, so it is likely that the roadster and its driver will have to suffer a lot at this point. What will be its final fate? It may be doomed to roam the solar system, or perhaps one day humanity will pick it up and place it in a museum. Anyone want a little-used, well-traveled electric car?