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Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster

The Roadster in a parking orbit, prior to departing Earth's gravity well into a trans-Mars injection heliocentric orbit
Names	SpaceX Roadster Starman
Mission type	Test flight (mass simulator)
Operator	SpaceX
COSPAR ID	2018-017A
SATCAT no.	43205
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft type	Tesla Roadster (2008) used as a dummy payload
Manufacturer	Tesla
Launch mass	1,300 kg (2,900 lb)
Start of mission
Launch date	20:45:00, February 6, 2018 (2018-02-06T20:45:00)
Rocket	Falcon Heavy FH-001
Launch site	Kennedy LC-39A
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Heliocentric
Eccentricity	0.26185
Perihelion altitude	0.9861 AU
Aphelion altitude	1.6779 AU
Inclination	1.093°
Period	1.537 year
Epoch	11 February 2018

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is part of an artificial satellite in heliocentric orbit. It is a Tesla Roadster sports car owned by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that served as the dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy test flight on February 6, 2018. The electric car and Falcon Heavy rocket were both made by Musk's companies, Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX. It is the first consumer car sent into space, and had previously been used by Musk to commute around Los Angeles.

The rocket's second stage, with the car attached to it, had sufficient velocity to escape Earth's gravity and enter an elliptical heliocentric orbit that crosses the orbit of Mars. The orbit reaches a maximum distance from the Sun at aphelion of 1.68 astronomical units (AU). During the early portion of its voyage, it sent live video back to Earth for slightly over four hours.

The choice of this car as a demonstration payload was variously interpreted as a marketing move for Tesla, an art object, or as contributing to space debris.

Background

In March 2017 Musk stated that the launch of the new Falcon Heavy vehicle was risky, and would carry the "silliest thing we can imagine". On December 1, 2017 he said that the payload would be his personal Roadster, subsequently verifying that he was not joking. On December 22, Musk published pictures of the car taken before payload encapsulation.

Traditionally, concrete or steel blocks are used as ballast in risky test flights. SpaceX wanted to demonstrate that their new rocket could carry a payload as far as the orbit of Mars. They reportedly had offered NASA to carry a scientific payload, but these plans did not come to fruition.

This Roadster became the first consumer car sent into space. Three manned rovers were sent to space on the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions in the 1970s and these vehicles were left on the Moon. The Roadster is one of two formerly manned vehicles in solar orbit, along with LM-4 Snoopy, Apollo 10's lunar module ascent stage launched in 1969.

Roadster payload

The first-generation Tesla Roadster is an all-electric sports car. The midnight cherry Roadster launched into space is one of Elon Musk's privately owned vehicles. Musk said in a 2012 interview that the Roadster was "the one I drive to work".

Positioned in the driver's seat is "Starman", a full-scale human mannequin named after the David Bowie song "Starman" and clad in SpaceX's pressure spacesuit. He has his right hand on the steering wheel and left elbow resting on the open window sill. The car's sound system was said to be looping the Bowie song "Space Oddity" even though no human can hear sound in space, it was intended as a symbolic gesture.

A number of whimsical objects were included in the Roadster. There is a copy of Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the glovebox, along with a towel (a reference to the book) and a sign on the dashboard that reads "Don't Panic!" (another reference to the book). A Hot Wheels miniature Roadster with a miniature Starman is mounted on the dashboard. A plaque bearing the names of the employees who worked on the project is underneath the car, and a message on the vehicle's circuit board reads "Made on Earth by humans". A copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series on a 5D optical data storage disc was included from the Arch Mission Foundation.

Launch

A license for the launch was issued by the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation on February 2, 2018. The car was installed in the Falcon Heavy rocket at an inclined position above the payload adapter in order to account for the mass distribution. The rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 15:45 EST (20:45 UTC) on February 6, 2018, and was initially placed in Earth parking orbit while remaining attached to the Falcon Heavy second stage. After a longer-than-usual six-hour coast phase through the Van Allen radiation belts, thereby demonstrating a new capability requested by the U.S. Air Force for direct geostationary orbit (GEO) insertion of heavy intelligence satellites, the second stage reignited for the Earth-escape trajectory.

SpaceX streamed a video feed on YouTube, starting at the rocket's launch, showing the Roadster and the mannequin from three cameras mounted inside the car, and from cameras on booms on the outside.

SpaceX did not say how long the feed was to run, and Musk had said the car's battery would last for about twelve hours, but the live stream actually ran for just over four hours. The video and images were released by SpaceX into the public domain.

Following the launch, the payload was given the USSPACECOM Satellite Catalog Number of 43205 with a description of "Tesla Roadster/Falcon SH" along with the COSPAR International Designator of 2018-017A. The Roadster remains attached to the second stage.

Orbit

The car was launched into an heliocentric orbit that will cross the orbit of Mars and reach a distance of 1.68 au from the Sun. The trajectory was not designed to intercept Mars, so the car will not fly by Mars nor enter an orbit around Mars.

Even if the launch targeted an actual Mars transfer orbit, the Falcon Heavy upper stage, which is still attached to the car, lacks the propellant, maneuvering, and communications capabilities required to enter Mars orbit. The purpose of launching the Roadster into its heliocentric orbit is to demonstrate that the Falcon Heavy can launch payloads that could reach Mars. It is moving away from Earth at a speed of 12,908 km/h (8,021 mph). The maximum speed of the car will be close to 121,600 km/h (75,600 mph) at perihelion.

Observations

Based on optical observations made using a robotic telescope at the Warrumbungle Observatory, Dubbo, Australia and refinement of the orbit, a close re-encounter with Earth (originally predicted for 2073) is not possible. In 2020, the car will pass about 6.9 million kilometers (4.3 million miles) from Mars, well outside Mars' gravitational sphere of influence.

The Virtual Telescope Project observed the Tesla two days after its launch, where it had a magnitude of 15.5, comparable to Pluto's moon Charon. The Roadster was automatically spotted and logged by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope operated by the University of Hawaii. The car was observed by the Deimos Sky Survey (DeSS) at a distance of 720,000 kilometres (450,000 mi) with a flashing effect suggesting spinning.

Through measuring changes in apparent brightness of the object, astronomers have determined that the Roadster is rotating with a period of 4.7589 +/- 0.0060 minutes. By February 11, 2018, astrometry measurements from 241 independent observations had been collated, refining the positions to within one-tenth of an arcsecond—more accurate than for most observations of objects in space.

Future

Musk speculated that the car could drift in space for a billion years. Solar radiation, cosmic radiation, and micrometeoroid impacts will structurally damage the car over time. Radiation will eventually break down any material with carbon–carbon bonds, including carbon fiber parts. Tires, paint, plastic and leather might last only about a year, while carbon fiber parts will last considerably longer. Eventually, only the aluminum frame, inert metals, and glass not shattered by meteoroids will remain.

A draft paper uploaded to arXiv, based on calculations starting from February 10, 2018 and evaluating 240 simulations over a 3-million-year timespan found a probability of the Roadster colliding with Earth at approximately 6%, or with Venus at approximately 2.5%. These probabilities of collision are similar to those of other near-Earth objects. The half-life for the tested orbits was calculated as approximately 20 million years, but with trajectories varying significantly following a close approach to the Earth–Moon system in 2091.

Reactions

The choice of this car as a dummy payload was variously interpreted as a marketing move for Tesla, an art object, or space debris.

Marketing

Musk was lauded as a visionary marketer and brand manager by controlling both the timing and the content of his corporate public relations. After the launch, Scientific American said using a car was not entirely pointless, in the sense that something of that size and weight was necessary for a meaningful test. "Thematically, it was a perfect fit" to use the Tesla car, and there was no reason not to take the opportunity to remind the auto industry that Musk was challenging the status quo in that arena, as well as in space. Advertising Age agreed with Business Insider that the Roadster space launch was the "greatest ever car commercial without a dime spent on advertising", demonstrating that Musk is "miles ahead of the rest" in reaching young consumers, where "mere mortals scrabble about spending millions to fight each other over seconds of air time", Musk "just executes his vision." Alex Hern, technology reporter for The Guardian, said the choice to launch a car was a "hybrid of genuine breakthrough and nerd-baiting publicity stunt" without "any real point beyond generating good press pics", which should not detract from the much more important technological milestone represented by the launch of the rocket itself.

Lori Garver, a former NASA deputy director initially said the choice of payload for the Falcon Heavy maiden flight is a gimmick and a loss of opportunity to further advance science—but later clarified that "I was told by a SpaceX VP (vice president) at the launch that they offered free launches to NASA, Air Force etc. but got no takers."

Art

Alice Gorman, a lecturer in archaeology and space studies said that its primary purpose is symbolic communication, that "the red sports car symbolises masculinity – power, wealth and speed – but also how fragile masculinity is" and then quoting another archeologist, that "The car is also an armour against dying, a talisman that quells a profound fear of mortality." Gorman wrote that "the spacesuit is also about death. It's the essence of the uncanny: the human simulacrum, something familiar that causes uneasiness, or even a sense of horror. The Starman was never alive, but now he's haunting space."

The Verge likened the Roadster to a "Readymade" work of art, such as Marcel Duchamp's 1917 piece Fountain, created by placing an everyday object in an unusual position, context and orientation. Some news reports observed a similarity between the real pictures of a car orbiting above a planet and the title sequence of the 1981 film Heavy Metal.

Space debris

Some newspaper articles published in Europe criticized the launch of the Tesla as crass or irresponsible. Hugh Lewis, an expert in space debris at the University of Southampton, tweeted "Intentionally launching a car to a long-lived orbit is not what you want to hear from a company planning to fly 1000s satellites in LEO." Orbital-debris expert Darren McKnight said that since the car is out of Earth orbit, he sees no risk here, but "The enthusiasm and interest that generates more than offsets the infinitesimally small 'littering' of the cosmos." Science writer Mark Kaufman said that Musk's orbiting car was "sensationalized" and a "grotesque show of wealth", as well as a missed opportunity to collect some minimal astronomical data by attaching cheap instrumentation to some basic platform instead of sending a car. However, it was no more "space junk" than the mundane material normally used to test rockets, which is deliberately placed either in a graveyard orbit or a deep space trajectory, where it is not a hazard, as in the case of this Falcon Heavy test.

Some have criticized launching a non-sterile object to interplanetary space that may risk biological contamination of a planetary object.

See also

• List of artificial objects in heliocentric orbit
• Humanity Star

References

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59. Chayka, Kyle (February 10, 2018). "Elon Musk made history launching a car into space. Did he make art too?". a staggering image … and so impressive that the video seems somehow unreal. It's the greatest car ad of all time. … In 1917, Marcel Duchamp put a urinal on a pedestal, titled it Fountain … and called it art. … a readymade, his word for a combination of everyday objects reassembled or re-contextualized by an artist.
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66. Let's talk about Elon Musk launching his Tesla into space. Jason Davis, The Planetary Society. 5 February 2018.

External links

• Views of Starman on YouTube
• Photographic animation of Roadster moving across the sky, at Wikimedia Commons
• Where is Tesla Roadster in Space, real-time orbit of the Roadster

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Depictions	Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2015) "The Musk Who Fell to Earth" (2015) The Space Barons (2018) Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019) "One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty" (2019) Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century (2021) Return to Space (2022) Elon Musk's Crash Course (2022) Elon Musk (2023) Musk (TBA)
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