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Washington, November 6th (EUROPA PRESS) .- The electric car and its pilot model wearing a spacesuit, launched on February 6th as part of the inaugural mission of the Space X Falcon Heavy rocket , have crossed the orbit of Mars.
"Current location of Starman.Then the restaurant at the end of the universe", SpaceX has published on its Twitter account a diagram in orbit.
The second sentence of this tweet, reported by Space.com, is a nod to the writer Douglas, who died today. Adams "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is the second novel in Adams' five-part series, "The Guide to the Hitchhiker of the Galaxy".
SpaceX's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a big fan of the "Hitchhiker's Guide", as evidenced by the Tesla Roadster car piloting the Starman manikin. The car's entertainment screen was programmed to say "Do not panic!", A phrase that adorns the cover of the Adams series electronic guide of the same name.
"Starman" is also a cultural reference; This is the title of a 1972 David Bowie song. And Musk said before the release that the Roadster would play full-blast Bowie's success in 1969, "Space Oddity," during his trek into the depths of space (though Starman does not hear the famous melody in the void without air). Finally, Musk chooses "Life on Mars", also from Bowie, as farewell music for Starman and Tesla.
Starman and his car will not stay beyond Mars. As you can see on the diagram, the couple will retreat into its heliocentric orbit to reach the Sun as close as the Earth.
According to a study, the Roadster and Starman will reach a few hundred thousand kilometers of our planet's orbits modeling. The authors of this study determined that the car would crush on Venus or Earth, probably in the tens of millions of years to come. They give the spacecraft 6% chance of collision with the Earth in the millions of years to come and 2.5% chance of hitting Venus during this period.
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