A Car Is Currently Orbiting the Sun Because of a Rocket Test Launch
Answers: “is there a car in space?”
New rockets don’t usually launch with anything valuable aboard — the failure risk on a debut flight is too high to trust it with an expensive satellite. So when SpaceX prepared the first launch of Falcon Heavy in February 2018, it needed a “mass simulator”: something heavy enough to stand in for a real payload, that nobody would mind losing.
SpaceX’s choice was, by rocketry standards, absurd: founder Elon Musk’s own cherry-red Tesla Roadster, with a mannequin nicknamed “Starman” strapped into the driver’s seat wearing a spacesuit, one hand on the wheel, sound system looping David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” on repeat.
Falcon Heavy — at the time the most powerful operational rocket in the world, formed by strapping three Falcon 9 boosters together — launched successfully, and the Roadster was sent not into Earth orbit but onto a trajectory looping out past Mars’ orbit and back toward Earth’s, circling the Sun instead of the planet.
It’s still out there. Astronomers have tracked its orbit and estimate it will continue looping the Sun for millions of years, occasionally passing relatively close to Earth or Mars, extremely slowly drifting further from its original path due to the gentle push of sunlight and gravity from other planets.
Two of Falcon Heavy’s three boosters landed back on Earth simultaneously that day, touching down side-by-side in a synchronized landing — arguably the more technically significant moment of the mission.
But the detail that stuck in public memory is simpler: somewhere in the solar system right now, there is a red sports car, doors intact, orbiting the Sun forever, because a rocket company needed something to throw away.