Six years ago, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Tesla into space; It was a pretty cool stunt that even Musk’s biggest haters would reluctantly agree was pretty cool. Since then, the Roadster has been on one hell of a ride away from Earth at an impressive speed of 25,290 kilometers per hour (15,715 mph), with perhaps an even more impressive fuel consumption of 10,671 kilometers per liter (25,100 mpg). ), at the time of writing the article.

Since its launch on February 6, 2018, the car has completed 4.1 revolutions around the sun, tipping over as it went, according to the Where Is Roadster tracker. We took a closer look at the spacecraft as it approached Earth in 2018.

Tracking the car isn’t astronomers’ most pressing problem (just like what those disappearing stars are), but some have tried to calculate the car’s fate and determine whether it’s a threat to Earth.

In 2018, the paper did just that, although it was a difficult task due to the vehicle’s eccentric orbit.

“Roadster shares many similarities with near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), which are unevenly distributed throughout the inner Solar System due to (i) repeated close encounters with terrestrial planets and (ii) the effects of mean motion and age resonances,” the team wrote. explains in the article.

“NEAs initially reach their orbits via strong resonances from the more distant main belt (e.g. the 𝜈6 age resonance or the strong 3:1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter). “Once inside these escape paths, many NEAs are directed into nearly radial orbits extending toward the Sun.”

This makes the probability of collisions with terrestrial planets relatively low, at just over 2 percent. However, Tesla’s situation is a little different.

“Tesla’s initial orbit overlaps that of Earth, so an initial period with an increased probability of collision with Earth can be expected before being randomly selected into a more NEA-like orbit,” the team continued. “Therefore, it is unclear whether Tesla will propagate to distant, powerful resonances and meet the same fate as the larger NEA population, or whether it will hit one of the terrestrial planets first.”

By looking at Tesla’s orbit past Mars and Earth, the team was able to predict the likelihood of collisions with terrestrial planets (including our beloved Earth).

In 2047, the machine will make another close approach from a distance of approximately 5 million kilometers (3.1 million miles). 100 years later, repeated close encounters with planets make long-term predictions of the car’s chaotic orbit “impossible.”

“However, using an ensemble of several hundred realizations, we were able to statistically determine the probability of a Tesla colliding with planets in the Solar System on astronomical time scales,” the team wrote.

On a much longer time scale, the team calculated that the probability of a vehicle colliding with Earth is about 22 percent, the probability of colliding with Venus is 12 percent, and the probability of colliding with the Sun is about the same as Venus. Luckily for Musk, this will happen in millions of years and is unlikely to impact Tesla’s share price.

A Starman placed in a vehicle can pray for a crash to occur sooner, assuming he is still intact and has somehow regained consciousness. While traveling through space, the puppet heard David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with one ear more than 624,000 times and “Life On Mars?” He listened to the song with one ear. played it with his other ear more than 841,000 times.