The Story
On 6 February 2018, the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Instead of the usual concrete or steel ballast, the rocket carried Elon Musk's personal midnight cherry Tesla Roadster — with a mannequin named Starman in the driver's seat wearing a production SpaceX pressure suit.
The dashboard screen read "DON'T PANIC" — a tribute to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. A copy of the book was placed in the glovebox, along with a towel and a miniature Roadster with a miniature Starman on the dashboard. A Hot Wheels car, because of course.
The upper stage performed a six-hour coast phase before a final burn that sent the Roadster past Earth escape velocity and into a heliocentric orbit — one that crosses Mars's orbital path and extends slightly beyond it. The car is now the most distant Roadster from any Tesla dealership, by a considerable margin.
The Orbit
The Roadster follows an elliptical heliocentric orbit with a period of approximately 557 days. Its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) is near Earth's orbital distance (~0.986 AU) and its aphelion (farthest from the Sun) extends beyond Mars's orbit (~1.664 AU). The orbit is inclined about 1.1° to the ecliptic plane.
JPL catalogues the Roadster as object -143205 in the Horizons ephemeris system. Its orbital solution (#10, from March 2018) was computed from optical observations by the Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS and other observatories in the weeks following launch. Since the Roadster has no active transponder or radio beacon, it cannot be tracked by the Deep Space Network — its position is computed entirely from its known orbital elements propagated forward.
Current Condition
After several years in interplanetary space, the Roadster has been subjected to intense solar radiation, extreme temperature cycling (roughly −250°C in shadow to +120°C in sunlight), micrometeorite impacts, and cosmic ray bombardment. The organic materials — paint, leather, rubber, the suit fabric — have almost certainly degraded significantly. A 2018 study by chemical researcher William Carroll suggested most of the car's carbon-based components would break down within a year under UV radiation.
However, the aluminium chassis, glass and the mannequin's helmet visor (polycarbonate) are far more resistant and should remain structurally intact for centuries or longer. The overall silhouette of a car with a suited figure is likely still recognisable, even if the surface is now bleached, pitted and crumbling.
Long-Term Fate
In 2018, researchers Hanno Rein, Daniel Tamayo and David Vokrouhlický published a study modelling the Roadster's orbital evolution over millions of years. Their Monte Carlo simulations found a roughly 6% probability of the Roadster colliding with Earth over the next million years, and about 2.5% for Venus. The first moderately close approach to Earth (~0.05 AU) won't occur for several decades. Over geological timescales, gravitational perturbations from the planets will gradually change the orbit in unpredictable ways.
For all practical purposes, Starman will be driving in silence around the Sun for far longer than any human civilisation has existed. The Roadster may outlast every structure currently on Earth.