Elon Musk & # 39; s Roadster and his dummy passenger performed a complete orbit around the sun

Where is the roadster going?

Starman had to travel to the orbit of Mars on a 400 million kilometer (400 million kilometer) journey, propelled by the main module, which was separating from Falcon Heavy shortly after its launch.

But in a slight hiccup, Elon Musk admitted that SpaceX had passed the third Falcon Heavy reminder burn, sending Starman farther into the solar system than originally planned.

The new orbit will send the Roadster into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

What will happen?

The main force that will tear the car for hundreds of millions of years in the space is radiation.

This will particularly affect plastics and the carbon fiber frame.

& # 39;[Those materials] are made up largely of carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-hydrogen bonds, "Dr. William Carroll, a chemist at Indiana University, told Live Science.

On Earth, we are protected by a strong magnetic field and an atmosphere that protects us from the worst radiation of the sun and cosmic rays.

The radiation in the space causes the breakage of these links, which will eventually bring the car to pieces.

"When you cut something with a knife, in the end you cut chemical bonds," said Dr. Carroll.

"All organic products will be subject to degradation by the various types of radiation you will encounter there," he said.

How long will it last?

"These organic products, in this environment, I would not give them a year," said Dr. Carroll.

Well-fixed inorganic materials, such as the aluminum frame and the internal metals, would last longer, which means that they could still be recognizable in at least a million years.

However, it is unlikely that all collisions with micrometeorites and other space debris will be avoided by that time.

Before the launch, Musk said that there was a chance that the car hits Mars. Now, on his new path, it's not clear if the car could hit another space object.