"Starman" and Tesla heading for deep space

Now in an elliptical orbit around the sun, the Tesla Roadster launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Tuesday during the powerful booster's maiden flight was expected to pass beyond the moon's orbit overnight Wednesday and reach the orbit of Mars in July as it puts Earth in its rear view mirror, analysts said. While SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk has said he likes to imagine the Tesla remaining in orbit for hundreds of millions of years or more, Jupiter's orbit is likely to fling it back to the solar system long before then.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a noted space analyst, says two forces acting on the car will limit its lifetime.

One is Jupiter. The giant planet's gravity perturbs bodies in the asteroid belt and, over time, will have an effect on the Tesla's trajectory. The other effect is a subtle acceleration produced by tiny temperature-related forces over extremely long periods that also would act to change the orbit.

"It's tiny, but over timescales of millions of years it's enough to shrink the orbit and make the thing fall into the sun," McDowell said. "So it's a race between does that happen before some Jupiter perturbation ejects it from the system.

"On timescales of centuries, it's going to be pretty much in the orbit it's in now. On timescales of thousands of years, it's going to be in a not-horribly-different orbit, but Jupiter will mess it around some. And then on timescales of millions of years, it won't be there anymore."

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Elon Musk celebrates successful Falcon Heavy rocket launch.

The SpaceX founder and CEO held a press conference hours after the Falcon Heavy successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday.

David Bowie - Space Oddity

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Major Tom (ten, nine, eight, seven, six)
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)
Check ignition and may God's love be with you (two, one, liftoff)

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
"This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows
Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you "Here am I floating 'round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do"

Songwriters: David Bowie

 

Tesla in space could carry bacteria from Earth

NASA's Office of Planetary Protection makes sure spacecraft planning to land on other planets are sterile. Much like an invasive species, organisms from Earth could thrive on another planet and wipe out native organisms. After all, it was bacteria that stopped the Martian invasion in H. G. Wells' fictional "War of the Worlds."

"If there is an indigenous Mars biota, it's at risk of being contaminated by terrestrial life," said Jay Melosh, a professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue University. "Would Earth's organisms be better adapted, take over Mars and contaminate it so we don't know what indigenous Mars was like, or would they be not as well adapted as the Martian organisms? We don't know."

But the Office of Planetary Protection doesn't regulate spacecraft that plan to stay in orbit; since the Tesla was never intended to land, it wasn't cleaned before takeoff.

"Even if they radiated the outside, the engine would be dirty," Melosh said. "Cars aren't assembled clean. And even then, there's a big difference between clean and sterile."

The Tesla could potentially land on Mars, although it's unlikely, he said. The car is in an orbit that crosses Earth's and Mars', and it will probably end up striking Earth, but it could be millions of years before that happens.

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A red Tesla convertible hitched a ride to space with a SpaceX rocket in early February, bringing with it what may be the largest load of earthly bacteria to ever enter space.

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Tesla car orbits earth : Elon Musk sends a Tesla car into space as part of his Falcon Heavy rocket launch today with Space X. They call him “starman”