How Will The SpaceX Roadster Degrade Over Time?
The Falcon Heavy maiden launch was on February 6 2018 and was a resounding success.
As just about everybody knows, the dummy payload for this test flight was Elon Musk's own personal roadster (see picture).
SpaceX says that the roadster will be in orbit around the Sun for a billion years or so.
So what will the roadster look like by then? This post explores that topic.
The Paint Job
We all know that when cars get to a certain age, the paint job does not look so good. The degrading effect of UV sunlight takes it toll on this exposed part of the car.
In space there will be no shielding effect from the atmosphere and no night so the degradation from the UV light will be severe.
Adding to this effect, the solar wind will make the degradation even faster and it is certain that the paint job will one of the first things to degrade. Its colour will fade, crack and peel quickly over time.
The Tires
The tires are another compound that is vulnerable to UV radiation as well as the solar wind. Even though they are black and may have UV protectants that will only somewhat delay the degradation rate.
Eventually the rubber compounds will break down and the tires will lose cohesion and crumble. Tire particles will drift away and eventually leave only the metal reinforcing bands and the rims.
The Windshield
The space environment is filled with radiation fields. The effect of radiation on the glass in camera lenses is called browning.
There is a whole sub-industry that has glass that is resistant to browning. The glass in the roadster's windscreen is not one of those materials and it will slowly brown over time.
Also, the effect of micro-meteors will etch the windscreen making it frost and will even punch holes into and through it.
The Body
The body panels are constructed using resin transfer molded carbon fiber composite to minimize weight. This material is not resistant to UV and other types of radiation and it will slowly degrade over time. The panels may eventually even turn to dust under the constant baking and molecular degradation from the radiation.
The Metal Parts
The metal parts on the car such as the engine, brakes, tire rims and wiring will last the longest but even they will succumb to the environment of continual bombardment from micro-meteors.
These meteors will impact at super high velocity and vaporize/punch small pits into the metal parts and blast away bits on a never ending and relentless basis.
The regolith on the Moon was produced in this way. The roadster will fare no better.
The End
Eventually the paint will be faded and gone, the tires will have turned to dust, the windshield will be browned and then broken to pieces small and large, the body panels will be degraded and then also turned to dust.
All that will be left is a lump of metal that will have been pounded by many billions of micro-meteors and maybe even large meteors.
The lightest particles that break off of the car will be driven away by the solar wind, light pressure and any electric fields in the solar wind.
The larger particles may stay in the vicinity of the remains of the car, orbiting for a billion years until they all finally fall into a planet (the Earth, Mars or maybe one of the asteroids).
Thank you for taking the time to read my post
I like to upvote insightful and helpful comments.
Curious, I wonder if they assessed the possible damage those paint chips, or anything else that comes off the car, may cause as the car floats around in orbit up there? Apparently a few years ago a paint chip hit a window on the ISS and left a significant mark. I admire Elon Musk and his achievements but I dont know how responsible of a choice this one was. I just hope we dont hear about a piece of a Tesla taking out a satellite sometime down the road.
Good point. The launch was fantastic. I hope that this artifact does not become a hazardous cloud of debris in the future.
I thought the endstate for this is to get it to Mars, but now I think its just supposed to eventually reach Mars just stay in orbit. Assuming of course nothing goes wrong en route of course.
My guess is that it was illegal for them to go near Mars because there is no way to sterilize that roadster. We don't want Elon's microbes contaminating the pristine Mars environment I guess.
The final orbit goes out past Mars into the asteroid belt. It will loop back to Earth in a ~1.5 year orbit.
My earlier post on this very topic.
Not sure if you familiar with this stuff in space website, I just learned about it. You can track where the Tesla is, among many other satellites and debris. Just some FYI if you interested.
http://stuffin.space/?search=tesla%20roadster
Thx for the upvotes everybody.