There’s a Starman, waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us, but he’ll have to wait several million years until the Yarkovsky effect brings him around to Earth again.
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, SpaceX recently launched a car into space. This caused much consternation and hand-wringing, but we got some really cool pictures of side boosters landing simultaneously. The test launch for the Falcon Heavy successfully lobbed a Tesla Roadster into deep space with an orbit extending out into the asteroid belt. During the launch coverage, SpaceX said the car would orbit for Billions of years. This might not be true; a recent analysis of the random walk of cars revealed a significant probability of hitting Earth or Venus over the next Million years.
The analysis of the Tesla Roadster relies on the ephemerides provided by JPL’s Horizons database (2018-017A), and predicts the orbit over several hundred years. In the short term — a thousand years or so — there is little chance of a collision with anything. In 2091, however, the Tesla will find itself approaching Earth, and after that, the predicted orbits change drastically. As an aside, we should totally bring the Tesla back in 2091.
Even though the Tesla Roadster, its payload adapter, and the booster are inert objects floating in space right now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t forces acting on it. For small objects orbiting near the sun, the Yarkovsky effect is a huge influence on the orbit when measured on a timescale of millennia. In short, the Yarkovsky effect is a consequence of a spinning object being heated by the sun. As an object (a Tesla, or an asteroid) rotates, the side facing the sun heats up. As this side faces away from the sun, this heat is radiated out, imparting a tiny, tiny force. This force, over a period of millions of years, can send the Tesla into resonances with other planets, eventually sending it crashing into Earth, Venus, or the Sun.
The authors of this paper find there is a 6% chance the Tesla will collide with Earth and a 2.5% chance it will collide with Venus in the next one Million years. In three Million years, the probability of a collision with Earth is 11%. These are, according to the authors, extremely preliminary calculations and more observations are needed. If the Tesla were to hit the Earth, it’s doubtful whatever species populates the planet would notice; the mass of the Tesla is only 1250 Kg, and Earth flies through meteoroids weighing that much very frequently.
Should have lined it up for a slingshot to solar escape velocity! But seriously, it would be awesome if we retrieve it in 2091.
Failing that someone should remaster that Voyager episode to make it a Roadster not a pickup.
That was one of the better episodes of the series.
Anyone remember the opening scene from Heavy Metal?
It will undoubtedly be pulled over for speeding. If it has not been programmed to use the turn indicator when it begins it’s return journey, that’s a second offense. Not to mention severely expired license plates and vehicle registration. Ticket #3. And what’s in the glove compartment???
What glove compartmen?
http://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-falcon-heavy-disintegrate-800610
Speaking of.. thats some impressive speeding considering you have no tires…
More importantly, who’s in the trunk?
More importantly, who’s in the trunk?
There may or may not be a teapot in the glove compartment.
Well played sir.
Did anyone else get an instant Dystopian sci-fi short story idea of a post-armageddon Earth, frantic survivors attempting to restart society from the wreckage, then wiped out unexpectedly by a forgotten returning Tesla?
What came to mind was a story of a time when there are domed cities on Mars and one of the characters drives around in the Roadster which he salvaged from space after replacing radiation-damaged parts.
Hubert J. Farnsworth finds it and turns it into a hover car.
They removed the battery and the motor, so it’d just be a pushmobile on Mars.
Does he have insurance?
By 2091, Space-X will own 78% of the Earth’s financial resources as well as a significant number of (now) 3rd World countries. Any attempts to file a lawsuit against them at that time will be ridiculous.
It already is, due to fandom.
Talk about a low-risk policy. Ten million years without an accident is a very good driving record!
Future object launches should be in shuttle-like vehicles with automatic landing. It’ll never last 1 millions years but it’s a fun thought.
This was all predicted by the great Prophet Fear Factory eons ago : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lERqGULWxs
Please watch until the end of the prediction.
*Gary Newman
The Fear Factory/Gary Numan tune was the first image that came to my mind when I saw this post here (yeah.. .I’ve been hiding under a rock along the last weeks). I am sure there will be plenty of time to play other song than Bowie’s Starman, lol!!
I wonder how many misinterpretation such object would produce hitting earth again a million years in the future, after human being have lost record of its past. Same apply for us today trying to rationalize every single prehistoric painting or sculpture as if the ancient times humans possesses no humor or artistic sense…..
Surely this was all predicted by Nostradamus already :)
The carbon units will now provide Elo’dster the required information.
So the Tesla will be back in 11 million years, just about the same time electric cars should be practical.
I wonder, if a company sent up a satellite to grab it, it may be possible to nudge it back to touch down on the moon.
That would *NOT* be a touchdown, but a full on impact :P
The required DeltaV for something as heavy to touch down on the Moon would command a LOT of fuel and thus a HUGE “hunting satellite”
I don’t think the Yarkovsky effect applies. It depends on the body’s rotation rate. The Tesla is barely rotating at all. With such a low rotation rate, the light pressure of the radiated heat is going to be mostly radial, which shouldn’t change the orbit.
Uh, no, it’s rotating pretty fast, with a period of about 5 minutes.
However the Yarkovsky effect is swamped by the fact that the Tesla was launched into such a dangerous orbit to begin with (obviously, since it was launched from Earth with no additional orbit corrections), and is basically guaranteed to have a close encounter in the next few hundred years which will dominate how much the orbit drifts.
Maybe Jimmy Hoffa is in the trunk?
I guess it’s not going to collide with anything, but instead will just burn up in the atmosphere. Even Mars’ minimal atmosphere should be sufficient to vaporize it.