Remember the Tesla that was sent to space?
Now, it’s done The first lap around the day.
In February last year, Musk’s SpaceX company launched the first heavy-duty Falcon rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle that humans have ever operated. At the same time, Musk also arranged a Roadster electric sports car to be loaded. The top of the rocket is in the fairing.
The driver’s position is also tied to a model astronaut named “starman”. Starman “opens” the sports car, “listens” to David Bowie’s song, and then flies with the heavy Falcon rocket. Into the space.
After that, it has been running at high speed in space, and the Website Where’s Roadster has also tracked this Tesla trip.
Since Starman took off, it has been 557 days.
The tracking report shows that the “flying distance” of this sports car has reached about 762 million miles, completing the first round of orbit around the sun. Moreover, it is approaching Mars.
The sports car is now about 0.7 billion miles from Mars and is moving to Mars at a speed of about 27,000 miles per hour (7.4 kilometers per second).
But actually, it also brought a good publicity effect to Tesla’s brand.
After all, Roadster became the first car to enter space, and now it is constantly breaking the record of “the car farthest from the Earth.”
On October 7, 2020, the Tesla sports car will be closer to Mars and fly in a nearby space approximately 4.6 million miles away.
But now because it is on the other side of the sun, we can’t see it on Earth. It will not be near the Earth until November 5, 2020, 32.30 million miles from Earth.
After that, Starman will start a lonely journey because it is estimated that until 2047 It will be close to the Earth again.
But at that time, maybe humans can already see it on Mars.
After all, NASA has A “Mars 2020 Mission”, plans to collect samples on that red planet and bring back samples from another planet for the first time Earth research, maybe it will meet Starman in space.
▲Apollo 11 astronaut Baz Aldrin stood on the moon; Mars 2020 rover concept map. Image from: NASA
Not to mention that more than two decades later, Musk’s Martian colonization plan has already landed almost the same, and space travel may not be so far away.
The title map and some images from: SpaceX