It’s been about a year and a half since the new Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX made its maiden launch into orbit. As a publicity stunt, SpaceX teamed up with another Elon Musk owned company, Tesla. Dubbed the SpaceX Starman Roadster, they launched an original Tesla Roadster (their first product) into orbit with a mannequin passenger, called Starman.
This Tesla has now officially orbited the Sun for the first time and is headed back in Earth’s direction. It took 557 days to orbit the Sun and has travelled 1.2 billion kilometres, according to data from Where is Roadster.
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We are currently on the opposite side of the sun, but we are expected to cross paths again in the future. It will be ‘relatively close’ to earth towards the end of 202, on November 5th, but you will only be able to see it in the night sky in the year 2047.
Given how expensive this publicity stunt was, it is interesting to see fans of the Musk companies still following the SpaceX Starman Roadster. Perhaps those marketing dollars were put to good use. Nonetheless, it is the only time we have sent an object so far around or solar vicinity for no other reason than PR, which is interesting in and of itself.
Perhaps we’ll intercept it sometime in the future and bring it back to Earth, and Starman can tell us everything of his harrowing journey.
What do you think of the SpaceX Starman Roadster experiment from SpaceX and Tesla? Let us know in the comments below.
