According to the latest news from NASA, NASA has officially listed Tesla Roadster, the first automobile flying object in human history, as a celestial body with astronomical number: 20 18-0 17A.

Just like locking all known celestial bodies (there are currently 683,000 known target celestial bodies), this artificial celestial body will always be tracked in the future.

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This means that Tesla coupe is no longer a car, but a space object-the target object of the solar system.

This also means that the United States, which advocates commercial value, once again leads the world, setting a new human record for brand marketing, and an automobile brand becomes an eternal celestial body.

As long as it doesn't hit other celestial bodies, flying in space for 1 100 million years is equal to eternity for the history of human civilization. )

The question is, where is this celestial body called Tesla Roadster? How far is it from us?

According to the official data released by Space Exploration Technology Company, at 2: 30 on February 7th (February 8th, Beijing time 15: 50), the third stage (the last stage) propellant was completely exhausted, and Tesla celestial body was entering the heliocentric orbit (orbiting the sun) at a speed of 3.8km/s, and will run at a speed of 165438+ per second in the future.

As of February 8, Beijing time, it was 19:4 1, about 470,000 kilometers (290,000 miles) away from the earth, which had already surpassed the moon's orbit.

On the same day, Musk also said:

"Tesla coupe will enter an elliptical orbit, with one end of the ellipse in Earth orbit and the other end in Mars orbit. In essence, it will travel back and forth between the Earth and Mars. We estimate that it will run in this orbit for hundreds of millions of years, even more than 65.438+billion years. Sometimes, it will be very close to Mars, and the possibility of hitting Mars is very small. 」

These words have several meanings:

Tesla celestial bodies are far from reaching Mars orbit, and the closest distance between Earth orbit and Mars orbit is 55 million kilometers. It is expected to arrive in six months.

Tesla celestial bodies are just artificial celestial bodies orbiting the sun and will not fly out of the solar system!

Even if 1 100 million years, it is impossible to fly out of the solar system because it has no endurance. It is just a modified car, and it is not designed as an artificial detector that can fly out of the solar system like Voyager 1 and 2.

There is only one final destination for Tesla celestial bodies: becoming a permanent artificial celestial body and flying over the solar system for more than 654.38 billion years.

Although Musk said half-jokingly, there is still a small possibility of hitting Mars ... but the probability is very small and can be completely ignored.

Tesla celestial bodies can't fly to the surface of Mars in the future, and certainly can't hit Mars or the Earth.

As shown in the figure, the perihelion of this elliptical orbit is 0.99 astronomical unit, and the apogee is 1.7 astronomical unit.

The perihelion is the closest point to the sun, and the apohelion is the farthest point. The so-called astronomical unit is the distance from the sun to the earth, which is about 65.438+0.5 billion kilometers. )

We know that the average distance between the earth and the sun is 1 astronomical unit (1AU), and the average distance between Mars and the sun is 1.5 astronomical unit (1.5AU).

In other words, the orbit of Tesla celestial bodies crosses the orbits of the Earth and Mars, and this elliptical orbit is flatter and larger than the latter two. However, the crossing of running tracks does not mean that you can collide, and this collision probability can also be ignored.

According to the orbit model, Tesla will fly over Mars orbit on July 12 this year, fly to apohelion (1.67AU) on October 9, 20 15, and fly over the earth on August 9, 20/kloc-0.

Can we observe it now?

It is impossible for us to see celestial bodies hundreds of thousands of kilometers away with the naked eye.

The apparent brightness is only equivalent to the maximum brightness of Ka Rong, a satellite of Pluto.

But its speed is much faster than other stars, and it can be found with astronomical telescopes, but it needs a telescope of 16 inches /400 mm to see it.

However, Space Exploration Technology Co., Ltd. has already made preparations for the first show-six hours after the successful launch of the Heavy Eagle on the morning of February 7, it began to broadcast live on the Space Exploration Technology Co., Ltd. live platform and YouTube live channel-the video images sent back from the three cameras set up on the Tesla coupe continued to broadcast live for more than four hours (4 hours, 39 minutes and 48 seconds).

Originally, the live broadcast was expected to be 12 hours, but it ended early because the car battery was exhausted. Think about it, this is also a big joke for Tesla, a pure electric vehicle brand.