Where is Elon Musk's Tesla after 5 years in space?

Virgin Radio

8 Feb 2023, 09:32

Do you remember how, half-a-decade ago, Elon Musk decided to shoot his personal Tesla Roadster into space? 

Well, Monday (6th February) marked exactly five years since SpaceX sent the cherry-coloured car on its journey off into the universe, and it’s still out there. 

The car was sent on its mission as a dummy payload on the first launch of the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket. Onboard was a mannequin named Starman, with David Bowie’s Space Oddity playing on an endless loop in one ear, while Life On Mars? played in the other.

But where on earth - or, rather, where in the galaxy - is the car now?

Well, thanks to a website called Where Is Roadster, it is possible to find out.

The site has been set up to calculate the trajectory of the car as it makes its endless journey through the stars. Sharing real-time stats, the website gives estimates of how far the vehicle is from earth, how fast it is going, and even how many times Starman would have listened to the two Bowie songs, assuming the battery was still working. 

So, where is it? Well, at just after 9am on Wednesday 8th February, it was 203,146,938 miles from Earth, moving toward Earth at a speed of 6,887 mph. This means that it was also 136,943,892 miles from the Sun, and 280,573,878 miles from Mars.

If the battery was still working, Starman would have listened to Space Oddity 496,534 times, and to Life On Mars? 669,058 times.

According to the website, Starman has completed about 3.2810 orbits around the Sun since launch, and the journey has been long enough to have driven on all of the world’s roads 63.2 times.