PHOTOSSo Cool! Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Launches Successfully Into Outer Space
Feb. 7 2018, Updated 4:55 p.m. ET
Isn't science awesome? Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy, which is the most powerful rocket to leave Earth since the Apollo missions, launched in Florida around 3:45 PM local time yesterday. The rocket happened to have one passenger on board as it made its way into outer space, a dummy named "Starman" who rode the driver seat inside one of Elon's cherry red Tesla mobile's which has been live-streamed all over the internet!
Falcon Heavy made a successful launch yesterday at 3:45 PM EST in Cape Canaveral, Florida in a historic launch for Elon's SpaceX program.
It launched with his cherry colored Tesla Roadster on board, which is now traveling a 24,500 MPH. Woah!
Elon mentioned that he was surprised the launch went off without a hitch yesterday, saying "I had this image of a giant explosion on the pad, with a wheel bouncing down the road and the Tesla logo landing somewhere with a thud," Musk told reporters here at Kennedy Space Center after the launch. "But fortunately, that's not what happened."
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Starman is currently zooming through space, and even played a David Bowie classic "Life on Mars" in the background.
The car's journey was originally intended to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars’ orbit. However, the rocket that is carrying the car seems to have overshot the trajectory and has put the mobile in an orbit that extends out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Because the ignition worked so well, it looks like it’s going so far into the asteroid belt that it will get relatively close to the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres.
Regardless of what happens, Elon looks very happy with the overall success of the launch, as he thanked SpaceX in several different tweets for helping make this happen. Story developing on where the Tesla car will actually end up in our solar system!
What are your thoughts on Elon's successful space mission? Sound off in the comments!
