Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster has sailed beyond Mars about 8 months after SpaceX launched it off Earth

Tesla Roadster.Tesla

Elon Musk's red Tesla Roadster has made its way past Mars' orbit, according to a tweet from SpaceX on November 2.
The Roadster, along with a dummy driver named "Starman" in the driver's seat, was launched into space on the Falcon Heavy rocket in February.
The website WhereIsRoadster.com calculated that the electric car is now about 179 million miles away from Earth and is moving at a speed of roughly 35,000 mph.
It's set to swing back into its planned 557-day orbit around the sun.

Elon Musk’s car is making its way across the solar system. The firm behind the endeavour, SpaceX, shared an image on Saturday showing how the “Starman” in Musk’s cherry red Roadster, launched on a Falcon Heavy in February, has made its way beyond Mars and is set to swing back on its current path.

starman tesla roadsters mars In this handout photo provided by SpaceX, a Tesla roadster launched from the Falcon Heavy rocket with a dummy driver named 'Starman' heads towards Mars.In this handout photo provided by SpaceX, a Tesla roadster launched from the Falcon Heavy rocket with a dummy driver named 'Starman' heads towards Mars.

The update is a reminder that, eight months after the company launched the car into space, it’s still embarking on its dramatic adventure. The initial mission sent Musk’s personal electric car into space, with a spacesuit-equipped dummy in the driver’s seat and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” playing on loop. On the dashboard is a reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the form of a “Don’t Panic” sticker. The car also includes a “5D quartz laser storage device…a high tech, high data storage unit that can survive the harsh environment of space,” storing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy of books.

See more: SpaceX Launches Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” Books Into Deep Space

The website WhereIsRoadster.com, developed by self-described space nerd Ben Pearson, shows the car is currently around 179 million miles from Earth and moving away at a speed of around 35,000 mph. The website also humorously states that the car has exceeded its 36,000-mile warranty around 10,000 times during its trip around the sun, racking up a total of 370 million miles. That’s enough to traverse every road in the world 16 times over.

The successful Falcon Heavy test flight marked the start of operations for the world’s most powerful rocket in current use, with the ability to send a 140,700-pound payload into low Earth orbit and 58,900 pounds into geostationary orbit. The whole thing weighs more than three million pounds, or around the same as 316 hippos.

spacex tesla roadster launch The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center on February 6, 2018 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket is the most powerful rocket in the world and is carrying a Tesla Roadster into orbit.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The rocket could soon be outclassed by the company’s next rocket, the BFR, scheduled to start hop tests at the Boca Chica facility next year ahead of a planned mission to Mars.

With “Starman” orbiting the sun once every 557 days, the hop tests of the successor rocket could take place before the car even completes one full orbit.

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