Where Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster car is eight years after being launched into space as update issued
Over eight years ago Elon Musk launched one of his cars, a Tesla Roadster, into space and there it has remained ever since.
2018 was a worryingly long time ago and while the car has been away in space an awful lot of things have happened back here planet Earth.
The Roadster was fitted with a dummy in a spacesuit named 'Starman' after the iconic David Bowie song, while it was also loaded up with a Hot Wheels car and a copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Ever since launch day there's been a site tracking the spaced Roadster and as far as it can tell the car is currently beyond the orbit of Mars, though it's currently heading back towards our planet.
Advert
The Roadster has its own orbit which at times intersects with the Earth's path around the Sun while also ranging further than Mars, at time of writing it's over 176 million miles away from our planet and heading our way at a speed of 18,440mph.
Meanwhile, it's around 132 million miles away from Mars and heading away from it, while it's also around 141 million miles away from the Sun, and it has orbited the star at the centre of our solar system five times since it was launched.
While the car is headed our way the chances of it returning to Earth are incredibly small, space is such a vase expanse that even objects heading in each other's direction can miss each other massively.
However, if it was to crash back to the ground then Musk might be in some trouble since he'd be responsible for the falling automobile.
It had been sent into space over eight years ago as the billionaire wanted to find the 'silliest' thing he could launch into space on a SpaceX test flight.
Should it strike Earth and land on something expensive then Dr Thomas Cheney, Vice Chancellors Research Fellow in Law at the University of Northumbria, told Forbes the question of charges would be a tough one.
Space is big, and the likelihood this causes issues beyond annoying people is minimal, but launching things into outer space should be done responsibly and for clear-cut justifiable purposes, not on the whims of a billionaire," he explained.
"It should also have been a warning sign about what sort of person Mr. Musk is."
"The only legal trouble Musk could get into is if the Tesla hits another human-made object and causes damage, but even then under the liability regime established by the Liability Convention and the Outer Space Treaty it would need to be proven that the Tesla was ‘at fault’.
"Which is something that we’re yet to define in any useful way - and the injured party would need to be willing to go to the effort and expense of taking legal action against SpaceX and the US government as ultimately the US government is liable under international law for any damage."
Joe Harker