Website tracks Tesla Roadster's location during road trip through space

The Tesla Roadster Elon Musk strapped to a rocket and launched into space has received so much fanfare that there is a website solely dedicated to tracking its current location.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 20, the Where is Starman? website reports it is more than 2.5 million miles from Earth and traveling at speeds close to 7,600 mph. The website also keeps track of how far Musk's red Tesla Roadster is from Mars and the Sun, its fuel economy and even how many times David Bowie's "Space Oddity" has played since its Feb. 6 launch (3,843 times).

"The current data that I am using comes from JPL Horizons," Ben Pearson, the website's operator, explains in the about section. "I am very thankful for this wonderful resource they have provided. I now have a script that I run periodically to update the information files that I have, which will allow for me to track this object, to the best of human understanding, for some time to come.

"This information will eventually expire, no longer being useful. I'm not sure exactly when that will be, but I suspect in a few years. Certainly it will be difficult to see when it next comes close to the Earth, which won't be for a long time."

Live view of Starman https://t.co/gvSlztlE6l
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2018

The Tesla Roadster was launched with SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket back on Feb. 6 from the Kennedy Space Center. Musk attached his red Roadster to the rocket with a mannequin spaceman he named "Starman" after the famous David Bowie song while "Life on Mars" blasted in the background.

With its three boosters and 27 engines, Musk's Tesla is attached to what is now the most powerful rocket in active use in the world.

For those curious of the Roadster's future, a recent study found in Cornell University's Library notes that its first close encounter with Earth will occur in 2091 with others coming every other 30 years or so. During its time in space, the Roadster has a 6 percent chance of colliding with the Earth and a 2.5 percent chance of hitting Venus, according to the Canadian and Czech researchers' study.

The team ran 240 computer simulations, and claim there is a slim chance the Roadster hits the sun, and nearly a zero chance it hits Mars. If the electric car does re-enter Earth's atmosphere, it is expected to burn up completely and leave nothing but small chunks falling to the ground.

Let's block ads! (Why?)