SpaceX Starman Roadstar completes orbit around the sun

Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy vehicle with a "Starman" dummy mannequin and the Tesla Roadster car onboard has successfully completed its orbit around the sun. The trip took 557 days since the space vehicle's launch on February 6, 2018. During this time, it has traveled 762 million miles.

According to WhereisRoadster, which tracks the location of the SpaceX Starman Roadster, the vehicle is 91,725 942 miles away from the sun when it was last tracked and is moving away from the star at the speed of 984 miles per second. The warranty of the Roadster inside, which was limited to 36,000 miles has been exceeded 21,199.3 times.

This is an interesting quip since the Roadster inside has barely moved. However, it has traveled enough distance to move around the world more than 33 times. It is moving at the fastest speed any car has moved at – a speed of 75,158 miles per hour. The vehicle is expected to complete another orbit around the sun in which it will also come close to Mars and Earth.

Elon Musk, who owns both SpaceX and Tesla admitted that the cargo was "kinda silly and fun," but also stated that "silly and fun things are important."

In terms of silly and fun things, the vehicle also has David Bowie's "Space Oddity" set to play on repeat. The song is expected to have played 151,000 by now aboard the space vehicle.

The Roadster has already flown near Mars and will come close to earth on October 7, 2020. People on earth will be able to see it in the sky on November 5, 2020, when it will be 32.3 million miles away from the planet. It will return home only in 2047 or 2091, and there is also a possibility that it will slam into Venus instead.

However, it might meet the NASA 2020 Mars mission in space which will be launched next year to collect samples from the planet.