Starman and the Tesla Roadster
a car in orbit round the Sun · launched on the first Falcon Heavy
0.78 AU from Earth
On 6 February 2018 the first Falcon Heavy carried a cherry-red Tesla Roadster, with a mannequin in a spacesuit called Starman at the wheel, as its test payload. The car is still fixed to the rocket's upper stage, coasting round the Sun on an orbit that crosses the paths of both Earth and Mars. Its dashboard screen read DON'T PANIC!
- 117 million km from Earth · 1.42 AU from the Sun · 24.1 km/s
- about 5.7 laps of the Sun (one every 557 days) · 6.98 billion km flown since 8 February 2018
- next close pass (predicted): Mars, 22 April 2035, 2.4 million km
- position from JPL Horizons · the slow spin is illustrative
Numbers that change with time are from 8 November 2026.
open Starman and the Tesla Roadster in the atlas ›- kind
- human-made craft
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- the Sun
More human-made craft
- James Webb Space Telescope infrared space telescope at Sun-Earth L2
- New Horizons space probe
- Voyager 2 space probe
- Voyager 1 space probe
- Hubble Space Telescope space telescope
- International Space Station crewed space station
- Crew Dragon capsule for crew and cargo
- Falcon Heavy rocket