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One of the craziest things Elon Musk has done in his SpaceX days is shoot his own Tesla Roadster into space. The car left Earth on the first Falcon 9 Heavy rocket the company launched. The rover has been orbiting the sun ever since.
This week, Starman made its closest flyby of Mars as it came within 5 million miles of the planet. The Roadster is in an elliptical orbit around the sun. Astronomer Jonathan Dowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that at that distance, Mars would appear about 1/10 the diameter of the Moon. That means it would be small, but not just a point of light in the sky as we see it from Earth.
The astronomer also pointed out that in 2047 Starman would pass about 5 million kilometers from Earth. That is too far to consider the vehicle as an object. Starman and his faithful journey have so far completed just under two orbits around the Sun. The rover passed Mars for the first time in November 2018.
The car is currently about 37 billion miles from Earth and has traveled nearly 1.3 billion miles since it was put into orbit. The rover will orbit the sun between Earth and Mars for millions of years. That is assuming it doesn’t crash into one of the planets. There is an estimated six percent chance that it will crash into Earth at some point in the future.
SpaceX is keeping busy sending resupply missions to the ISS and preparing for its first crewed mission in the coming months. It is also busy launching Starlink satellites into orbit with the most recent launch on October 6 and sending 60 new satellites into space.
