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Washington, Nov. 6 (EUROPA PRESS) .- The electric car and its mannequin driver dressed in a spacesuit, launched Feb. 6 as part of the inaugural mission of the Space X Falcon Heavy rocket, have crossed the line. Orbit of Mars.
"Current location of Starman.Next step, the restaurant at the end of the universe," SpaceX has posted on his Twitter account, with a diagram in orbit.
The second sentence of this tweet, according to Space.com, is a nod to the writer Douglas Adams. "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is the second novel in the five-episode series of Adams, "The Guide to the Hitchhiker of the Galaxy".
The founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is a big fan of the "Hitchhiker's Guide", as evidenced by the Tesla Roadster car that drives the Starman manikin. The car's entertainment screen was programmed to read "Do not panic!" – this sentence which adorns the cover of the electronic guide of the same name of the Adams series.
"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). Musk has finally chosen "Life on Mars", also from Bowie, as farewell music for Starman and Tesla.
Starman and his car will not stay beyond Mars forever. As you can see in the diagram, the pair will retreat into its heliocentric orbit, eventually reaching the Sun as close as the Earth.
The Roadster and Starman will reach a few hundred thousand kilometers of our planet in 2091, according to an orbital modeling study. 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 a 6% chance of colliding with Earth in the next millions of years, and a 2.5% chance of reaching Venus during this time.
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