Website Lets You Track Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster in Space

Megalith

Megalith

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Ben Pearson has set up Whereisroaster.com to let Tesla fans figure out just where Elon Musk’s Roadster has ended up in space, and how fast it is going. The latest statistics suggest that it is over 2,252,804 miles from Earth, moving away at a speed of 6,737 miles/hour.

The current data that I am using comes from JPL Horizons. I am very thankful for this wonderful resource they have provided. I now have a script that I run periodically to update the information files that I have, which will allow for me to track this object, to the best of human understanding, for some time to come.
 
October 20th, 2020 should have one heavy gravitational effect on the craft as it gets pulled by a conjunction of earth and Mars. Wonder what that will do to its orbit.
 
Is this website supported by massive government welfare just as Elon Musk and his companies are? I don't know why so many people like him and get wet dreams over SpaceX or Tesla. The man just profits off of others work and money (aka taxpayers).
 
I would love to have a hi rez huge poster of that pic on my wall. I guess I could print one at Kinko's but all the Starman images I've seen have been pretty crappy... webcam stuff.

Musk missed out on huge potential merch sales by not jumping on that.
 
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.

How can it be going 6,734 miles/hour leaving Earth but approaching Mars at 42,981 miles/hour. Does it have to do with the direction Earth and Mars is?
 
Where is the Tesla roadster? Just ask the Ontario Provincial Police. One of their cruisers is right behind it
 
Skillz said:
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.

How can it be going 6,734 miles/hour leaving Earth but approaching Mars at 42,981 miles/hour. Does it have to do with the direction Earth and Mars is?
Click to expand...

Maybe they mixed the reference frames?
 
Skillz said:
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.

How can it be going 6,734 miles/hour leaving Earth but approaching Mars at 42,981 miles/hour. Does it have to do with the direction Earth and Mars is?
Click to expand...


Could be using mars orbit to pick up speed
 
Skillz said:
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.

How can it be going 6,734 miles/hour leaving Earth but approaching Mars at 42,981 miles/hour. Does it have to do with the direction Earth and Mars is?
Click to expand...

Travling angle might be different. It might not be travling a straight line from the center of one to the center of the other/ and since distance is measure in center to center (or outer perimeter anchored in the centers) those two things are not the same
 
F3ck it I'll illustrate with my leet 3d rendering skills

Roadster.png


Please note if you are not viewing this on at least an 8k monitor the quality might be degraded


Anyway, this illustrates just a very scientific guestimate ( I have absolutely nothing to back up this is the case) to why leaving something and arriving something else is not done at the same speed.
The angle form earth reduces how much of the cars traveling speed actually goes into increasing distance. kinda like if you drive in a circle around a tree. you might drive for a long time, but never increase you distance to said tree.
if the angle towards mars is more direct, more of the traveling speed goes towards reducing the distance.


again this is just an example of why the numbers do not have to match. not saying this IS the reason

-- edit --
for some reason the embedding is not working correctly
 
Skillz said:
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.
Click to expand...

Earth and Mars are both moving differently relative to the spacecraft. The roadster launched from Earth and is still close by, so the velocity difference is fairly low.

The roadster's trajectory puts in on a path that crosses Mars orbit then falls back towards Earth orbit. Mars happens to be approaching the crossing point, so they're moving towards each other at high speed.

SSimmons05 said:
October 20th, 2020 should have one heavy gravitational effect on the craft as it gets pulled by a conjunction of earth and Mars. Wonder what that will do to its orbit.
Click to expand...

It'll make no difference at all, planetary masses are too small to matter at that distance over such a short timescale. If undisturbed by humans the roadster will probably remain in this orbit for thousands or millions of years until it happens to pass close enough to interact with Mars/Earth, either a collision or gravity slingshot to a higher/lower orbit around the sun.
 
I like the idea of that site. A bunch of people checking in every day only to see that the thing is basically in the same place it was yesterday. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Space is kinda big, even interplanetary space. Voyagers have been travelling for 40 years and still aren't even one light-day from Earth.
 
Skillz said:
Can someone explain how it's speed is different moving AWAY from Earth and moving TOWARD Mars.

How can it be going 6,734 miles/hour leaving Earth but approaching Mars at 42,981 miles/hour. Does it have to do with the direction Earth and Mars is?
Click to expand...

The site has an HTML5 animation of the Roadster's orbit which should clear up what it's doing.

Long story short, it's a frame-of-reference thing, intersecting with a geometry thing. Orbital mechanics is weird.

Long story shorter, play Kerbal Space Program.
 
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