Is it going to orbit the Sun? I'm curious to know what happens on its orbit over time. Could it collide somewhere down the line?
Perhaps SpaceX just launched the first man made Planet?
EDIT: Would love to hear the downvoter's reasons.
Not public, no.
> Is it going to orbit the Sun?
Yes.
> Could it collide somewhere down the line?
Yes, but unlikely in the next couple million years.
> Perhaps SpaceX just launched the first man made Planet?
A planet has a definition involving size and shape, which the Roadster does not fit.
So, the reason I asked was because of not having a source. Did this come from SpaceX or someone authoritative who has done the math?
> A planet has a definition involving size and shape, which the Roadster does not fit.
That was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I know, correctness > humor.
SpaceX said that wrt. their original projected trajectory of a Mars Transfer Orbit. Since right now we're talking about something more like Ceres Transfer Orbit, the projection can change (and, as per article, astronomers are asking Elon for details to calculate it), but keep in mind one thing: space is big and empty. The chance of it hitting anything on short timescales are close to 0.
But one of the reasons I asked was not because I was worried about whether it would hit something on a short timescale (even though there is a non-zero chance it could happen). I'm aware of the vastness of space.
I was curious about what happens over 10, 10^3, 10^9, 10^12, 10^100 orbits later.
My curiosity is about visualizing the orbit over time (which includes a non-zero possibility of collision).
P.S. I doubt you would disagree that speculating about where the Roadster will be when the Sun will be getting colder is fun, and not 'nobody really cares.'
Of course, such simulators are hard and expensive and mostly approximations, but doesn't hurt to ask about what options are out there.
While this is on average true (i.e. including interstellar space) , it doesn't apply to an orbit within the solar system with large AU orbits: Jupiter's massive gravitational field will make the Tesla's orbit unstable.
> The chance of it hitting anything on short timescales are close to 0.
There's no way of knowing this without calculating and modeling the trajectory, but SpaceX is not publicly providing this information. I understand the potential for bad PR from clickbait headlines like "Tesla to crash into Earth in 2052"* (*according to a Ugandan teen space enthusiast/prodigy, modelling in KSP)
There's no way of knowing this without calculating and modeling the trajectory, but you can still be 99.99% sure that it's not going to hit anything for thousands or even millions of years even without extra information. As the parent poster said, the chance is close to 0.
Well, if the recent progress in the space sector continues, I'm confident that in the next few decades someone will make a mission to rendezvous with the Roadster, just for the kicks.
Interestingly, I've read that these simulations use Newtonian physics, not general relativity, to model the solar system. At interplanetary speeds, the error between the two is just too small to matter.
So if you want to project the orbit for the "lifetime" of the Roadster, you'd have to just run the simulation forward until it finds a collision or the sun burns out.
This would take a lot of energy and time... it would not be worth it.
The main reason is that interplanetary space is very empty in general, so without running any simulation we can guesstimate that an accidental collision is very unlikely.
Also, probably no one really cares if the Roadster hits an asteroid 513 million years from now.
Finally, a physical model simulating that many objects is chaotic--even eensy weeny teeny tiny little errors will compound over time and produce a divergence from reality. I doubt anyone has characterized this drift beyond the horizon needed to plan missions--a few decades at most. So even if you ran the model forward for 513 million model years, there might be no way to constrain the accuracy of the final predicted location of the Roadster. Heck, maybe the difference between Newton and GR would matter at these time scales.
KSP has a very simplified model, and doesn't even offer full n-body simulation. You can try GMAT [1] as a general purpose orbital dynamics tool; it's fun to play with. There's also plenty of Python libraries for gravitational dynamics available, pykep being an example. Of course, you'll have to know the precise Roadster orbit parameters, and this is a problem.
Or does it?
Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious.