Tesla Roadster has been officially logged as a celestial object by NASA | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Roadster has been officially logged as a celestial object by NASA

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91 pointsneverminder42 comments

The ATLAS near-Earth asteroid survey (full disclosure: I am on this project) detected the Roadster last night as part of routine operations:

https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/962013418143195141

This NASA filing undercuts Elon's claim that the Roadster is headed for the Asteroid belt. 1.7 AU is past Mars (1.5 AU) but well short of Ceres (2.77 AU). I think it's fair to call him out for unreasonable exaggeration on that one.

Yeah I'm unclear if they were exaggerating, or just wrong. It seems unlikely you'd generate a plot showing an intentionally wrong trajectory/aphelion that could be shot down by later observation. I'm actually wondering if they just had insufficient or insufficiently accurate data initially on its position/velocity and as they got more observation time, corrected it.

>But astronomers online noticed some discrepancies with the numbers Musk tweeted, and SpaceX ultimately sent a revised orbit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday (You can find it by selecting “target body” -143205.) The new orbit shows that the car will indeed travel farther out than the orbit of Mars, but not far enough to make it to the asteroid belt. The belt begins about 329 million miles from the Sun, and the Tesla will reach a distance about 160 million miles away from the Solar System’s star.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...

That still definitely sets the record for most miles traveled by an automobile.

And with so little wear and tear! Sure, the ionizing radiation will eventually do a number on the paint job, but compared to any other car that's travelled 180 million miles, it looks FANTASTIC!

His post was a mistake, and it contained contradictory information. The tweet states a c3 of 12km^2/s^2, but the trajectory shows much greater than that. The actual trajectory does fit the c3 in his tweet.

It clearly wasn't intentional on Elon's part (why would you intentionally post a false trajectory with contradictory information when the real trajectory will soon be found observationally by 3rd parties? that'd just make you look bad). A technical error was obviously made somewhere. So it's not fair to call it an exaggeration. Just a technical mistake. Call him out for jumping the gun and not verifying first, perhaps.

Wikipedia gives a scatterplot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#/media/File:Main...

There are some dots as close as 1.7 AU.

How does one go about telling the DMV that your car is no longer in use because you sent it up to space on a rocket?

You just pray they don't make you bring it back for an inspection.

Im sure they have a form for that.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/febfde34-fc2b-415a...

"The vehicle(s) listed below will not be operated, moved, or left standing (parked) upon any California highway[....]"

Odd that it doesn't mention the Falcon 9 stage 2 that the Tesla is still attached to. That's much larger than the Tesla itself, so you'd have thought it worth mentioning.

Are there any pictures of the Tesla + Falcon stage together?

All pictures I’ve seen of the Tesla were carefully cropped to show only the car.

I don't think they were actually cropped, I think the way they setup the roadster on an "incline" and then placed camera mounts to capture the driver means that none of them are pointed 'down' at the 2nd stage.

See http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/02/08/16/48FF7CDC0000057... for camera positions.

To get a picture of both, you'd really need alot more distance away, or to be looking mostly 'down' towards the payload adapter.

> A plaque on the attachment fitting between the Falcon Heavy upper stage and the Tesla is etched with the names of more than 6,000 SpaceX employees.

That's a pretty unique employee benefit.

Also underplayed in the media thus far, yet a key feature. I wonder whether this is because the media were not briefed on that?

Normally the media just parrot talk press releases so I guess the name plaque was there just for the team and not really for the wider audience.

Incidentally, is 'presure' an American version of British English 'pressure'?

It's 'pressure' here as well, 'presure' would just be a misspelling.

Fastest production car ever built.

Is it a working model? does it have an engine?

It has a huge great rocket engine and fuel tanks attached. Does it still qualify as "production" with that minor modification?

No. Aliens should be able to take this and drive on their roads.

Should be able to if they can fit new batteries in.

As far as we’ve been led to believe, yes to both. It is supposedly a fully typical and operational Tesla Roadster.

I very seriously doubt that it launched with the lithium-ion batteries installed. And I'm almost certain the tires were not inflated.

I agree with your assessment. They can't risk Lithium-ion in space temperatures and pressures. What do you think of the spaceman? Did they bolt him on to the car seat?

The 2008 Roadster had a nominal curb weight of 1,305kg. Remove the 450kg battery and it should be 855kg, much less than the "~1,250kg" mass reported by NASA.

Electric cars don't have "engines."

By definition a celestial object is a natural object. http://www.yourdictionary.com/celestial-object

So how does a Tesla Roadster classify?

You are correct: by the standard definition, the Roadster is not a celestial object.

It was just loose terminology in the tweet. When you look up the Roadster on the HORIZONS database it doesn't call it a celestial object.

To see the details, first click the link in the tweet:

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi?CGISESSID=c3cbd47fbf60...

Then click the Cancel button at the bottom of the page. It should now show SpaceX Roadster for the Target Body, and a Generate Ephemeris button at the bottom. Click that button for details.

The thing I'm most curious about is how long Earth will be able to get a 30fps 1080p video stream from the vehicle.

In a way, it feels like a sort of generally-accessible, high-definition version of a classic NASA probe - we've all seen pictures from space after they've been meticulously stitched together by NASA imaging professionals, but this is the first time anyone in the world can visit a website and get a live, full-frame-rate video stream from the vacuum of space.

All communication ceased about 12 hours after launch. The vehicle has no solar panels, so the battery (presumably not the stock one) depleted.

NASA regularly broadcasts live HD video from a comparable distance (ISS).

Not so easy to do from deep space.

One of the arguments against theism used to be Russell's Celestial Teapot.

Now there will actually be a sophisticatedly designed and constructed object just orbiting the Sun.

There may or may not be a teapot in the trunk of the Tesla. Musk isn't saying.

I won't be surprised if they put a real teapot somewhere.

What would Russel have to say about a parking ticket under the wiper on the roadster? Or "wash me" scrawled in space dust on its rear hatch...

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1866/

Personally I'm still waiting for someone to actually do this and put a literal teapot into orbit.

What are the laws on space salvage? Just wondering in case I happen across that Roadster someday.

Finders keepers!

I'd be more worried about Musk being fined by Space Government.

Ok, but does this space vehicle have a name?

So is this now a silly setup for a "celestial" car chase? :) (e.g. Fast and Furious 1293: Interstellar Edition)

"Drifting past Ceres" just got a whole new meaning.

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