Photo: SpaceX
Soon after the launch of a Tesla Roadster car into outer space, it became clear that the vehicle would miss its initial intended target, Mars. Predictions now say the spaceship, as NASA called it, will enter a heliocentric orbit, meaning it will dance in circles around the sun and the Solar System for millions of years.
Thing is, with each orbit it will do around the sun, the car-in-space will get closer and closer to the planet it left behind, until one day very, very long time from now, it will crash into the Blue Planet. At least, that is what Hanno Rein of, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, claims.
According to National Geographic, Rein’s calculations point to the Roadster impacting Earth in a few tens of millions of years. Fortunately for us, we will have long destroyed our home world ourselves by then, so not much problem there.
The calculations made by the astrophysicist are not a given, but the most likely outcome in an equation riddled with variables. Still, Rein does say that the Roadster will be at its first nearest point to Earth in 2091 when it comes in at a lunar distance from us.
“It will have a lot of close encounters with Earth initially,” Rein told the source.
“A bit later, it will also have close encounters with Venus and Mars. During every close encounter, it will change its orbit a little.”
There is, however, no chance the car will crash on Mars. In the next million years, the chances of it hitting Earth are 6 percent. In three million years, chances increase to 11 percent, and so on.
Currently, the Tesla Roadster is being tracked by the Virtual Telescope Project via a series of real, robotic telescopes, remotely accessible online. Last week, NASA listed the Tesla Roadster on its HORIZONS Web-Interface as a spacecraft.
According to National Geographic, Rein’s calculations point to the Roadster impacting Earth in a few tens of millions of years. Fortunately for us, we will have long destroyed our home world ourselves by then, so not much problem there.
The calculations made by the astrophysicist are not a given, but the most likely outcome in an equation riddled with variables. Still, Rein does say that the Roadster will be at its first nearest point to Earth in 2091 when it comes in at a lunar distance from us.
“It will have a lot of close encounters with Earth initially,” Rein told the source.
“A bit later, it will also have close encounters with Venus and Mars. During every close encounter, it will change its orbit a little.”
There is, however, no chance the car will crash on Mars. In the next million years, the chances of it hitting Earth are 6 percent. In three million years, chances increase to 11 percent, and so on.
Currently, the Tesla Roadster is being tracked by the Virtual Telescope Project via a series of real, robotic telescopes, remotely accessible online. Last week, NASA listed the Tesla Roadster on its HORIZONS Web-Interface as a spacecraft.
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