After 12 hours of beaming video footage of its travels through outer space back to Earth, Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster ran out of battery.
Without the footage, us Earth-bound humans have been unable to see the car, but now, thanks to Ben Pearson, we can sort of get an idea.
Using data from NASA’s JPL Horizons, Pearson created a site, called Where Is Roadster, that tracks the car’s progress compared to the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, reports Business Insider.
Although it’s not affiliated to SpaceX in any way, on Sunday, Musk tweeted a link to the site along with the tongue-in-cheek comment:
“I’m sure it’s parked around here somewhere.”
Cute.
As is stands, at about 8:45AM on Tuesday, the site put Musk’s car at:
3 942 790 km from Earth, moving away from Earth at a speed of 12 193 km/hour or 3.39 km/s.
The car exceeded its 36 000 mile warranty 672.3 times while driving around the Sun, (38 953 451 km) moving at a speed of 115 693 km/hour. It has achieved a fuel economy of 81.7 km/litre.
Assuming the battery still works, Starman has listened to Space Oddity 3 623 times since launch.
Poor Starman.
Even though astronomers have been able to spot the car in the night sky, Pearson created an animation to show what Earth and the Moon would look like if the car’s cameras were still broadcasting:
The site also comes with this handy animated school-like solar system, which is a whole lot more useful than the video above:
Then there’s a list of “Upcoming Key Milestones” – provided in astronomical units (AU), which is a unit of length roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun – just in case you want to jot them down in your diary.
The things people do for fun.
So bookmark Where is Roadster and, every time you think of Starman, go check out where he is.
[source:businessinsider]
