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Starman has traveled a lot of kilometers on his Tesla Roadster in the last nine months.
The red electric car and its manikin pilot dressed in space suit, launched during the first mission of SpaceX's massive Falcon Heavy rocket in February, have overtaken the orbit of Mars, officials said. company Friday night (November 2nd).
"Starman's current location.Next step, the restaurant at the end of the universe," announced SpaceX on Twitter on Friday, accompanied by a diagram in orbit. [Epic SpaceX Road Trip Photos: Starman Rides a Tesla Roadster in Space]
The current location of Starman. Next step is the restaurant at the end of the universe. pic.twitter.com/Ty5m8IjJpE
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 3, 2018
The second sentence of this tweet, of course, is a nod to the late great writer Douglas Adams. "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is the second novel in the series "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in five parts of Adams.
SpaceX's Starman model is seen inside Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster with Earth in the background, shortly after its launch on February 6, 2018. As of November 2, the duo was beyond the orbit of Mars.
Credit: SpaceX
Like many of us, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is a big fan of the "Hitchhiker's Guide", as Starman's Roadster shows. The entertainment display of the car was programmed to read "Do not panic!" – the phrase that adorns the cover of the eponymous electronic guide of the beloved series of Adams.
"Starman" is also a cultural reference; it's the title of a 1972 song by David Bowie. And Musk said before launching that the Roadster would thoroughly play Bowie's "Space Oddity" hit in 1969 during his journey into the deep space (though Starman could not hear the famous air in the void without air). In the end, Musk chose Bowie's "Life on Mars" as a separation music for Starman and Tesla.
Diagram showing the orbit and current position (as of November 2, 2018) of the Starman manikin and his Tesla Roadster, which SpaceX had launched on the first flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018.
Credit: SpaceX via Twitter
Musk said that he had launched the Roadster and Starman because the duo is much more fun than the typical dummy payload of inert mass (pun, sorry). The launch of a satellite or other valuable spacecraft was not an option given the risks inherent in the early flights. (Musk also uses Tesla, so the advertising probably also played a role.)
Starman and his merry-go-round – which once belonged to Musk – will not remain beyond Mars forever. As you can see on the diagram, the pair will turn back on its heliocentric orbit to eventually get closer to the sun like Earth.
According to an orbit modeling study, the Roadster and Starman will be a few hundred thousand kilometers away from our planet. The authors of this study determined that the car would be projected on Venus or Earth, probably in the next tens of millions of years. They give the space car a 6% chance of hitting the Earth in a million years and 2.5% hitting Venus during this time. [In Photos: SpaceX’s 1st Falcon Heavy Rocket Test Launch Success!]
You can follow the space dummy and the cosmic Tesla on whereisroadster.com, a website created by Ben Pearson, founder of Old Ham Media.
The second mission of Falcon Heavy, which will launch the Arabsat-6A satellite communications satellite in the geostationary orbit, is scheduled for January 2019.
Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there" will be published on November 13 by Grand Central Publishing. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally published on Space.com.
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