Eight years ago, Elon Musk and his SpaceX company launched a Tesla Roadster into space as a dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy test flight in February 2018. With a fake astronaut in the car, the EV is still flying high above the Earth.
Eventually, unless it is somehow recovered back to Earth, the car is likely to slowly deteriorate over time, with just the metal skeleton of the car remaining. But that hasn’t stopped some people wondering if it may one day crash-land back on Earth.
There is one man who might be able to answer that question. That man is Ben Pearson, and he runs the WhereIsRoadster website, which tracks the car as it makes its way across space. The tracker even updates in real-time, so we can see virtually exactly where it is at any given time.
Pearson recently spoke to automotive publication and influencer Supercar Blondie about the Roadster and where it has been. He also discussed whether we should worry about it hitting the Earth, and the other possible scenarios that might befall the EV. There is, of course, every chance it is up in space forever.
How the Tesla Roadster Is Tracked
Pearson is able to track the car using NASA data. The website gives coordinates as to where it is, and we also get to see its speed, how far away from Earth it is, and a graphic that shows its position relative to Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Sun. Pearson has also added a little bit of extra information to the site to make it more fun.
For example, Pearson says the car has exceeded its 36,000-mile warranty 117,088 times while driving around the Sun, at the time of writing this article. As we wrote this article, the car was traveling around at a speed of 32,410mph. It is also currently over 150,000,000 miles away from the Sun, which at the time of writing is roughly 13.73 light minutes. It is phenomenal how detailed Pearson’s data on the car is.
When the car was sent up, it played Space Oddity by David Bowie on the radio. If the battery is still working, the fake astronaut Starman has listened to the song 840,556 times. The one thing that has worried some people, however, is whether the car would ever end up flying back towards the Earth. That is certainly possible, but as Pearson said, it isn’t something to worry about.
Don’t Worry About the Roadster Hitting the Earth
“There’s a decent chance that it’ll hit Earth eventually. Is it something we should be worried about? No,” he said to Supercar Blondie. This is because the car would just burn up in the atmosphere. All of the sensitive materials, such as the batteries, were also removed before it was launched into space. So if it did reenter our atmosphere, it wouldn’t make it to the ground in one piece.
There are several other scenarios for the fate of the EV. The Tesla Roadster could hit Venus, or it could also be tossed into the outer part of the solar system. It would then be interplanetary, and there would be no chance of it ever hitting the Earth. At this moment in time, the Roadster is incredibly far away from our planet. In fact, we won’t be able to get a glimpse of it through a telescope until January 11th, 2047. So there is no need to go rushing outside for a closer look.