You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: How Will The SpaceX Roadster Degrade Over Time?
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