Starman trajectory in future

Question

How will the Starman move in the future? So far I have seen it goes quite beyond Mars, but what happens after that, will it orbit sun in some peculiar orbit?

Isn't it risk for future flights? I guess they will need to monitor objects en route to Mars. Isn't it actually way how clutter the "road" to Mars the same way our orbits are?

There are tens if not hundreds of millions of 100+ meter asteroids in the inner solar system alone (let alone smaller rocks), but we've never hit one with a probe because space is big. A manned mission will likely include radar just in case, too. — ceejayoz, Feb 07 '18 at 11:13
The plot shown in the question Starman/Roadster in a=1.795 AU orbit, now what's the method to this madness? already shows the projected orbit. — uhoh, Feb 07 '18 at 14:33
It is only part of it, isn't it or am I reading it the bad way? — Zveratko, Feb 07 '18 at 15:53

score 11 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 15 '18 at 21:24

11

No, it's not a risk. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

As for the future trajectory, there's already a great preprint paper where they propagated it out several million years with uncertainties to see what can happen: The random walk of cars and their collision probabilities with planets.

By running a large ensemble of simulations with slightly perturbed initial conditions, we estimate the probability of a collision with Earth and Venus over the next one million years to be 6% and 2.5%, respectively. We estimate the dynamical lifetime of the Tesla to be a few tens of millions of years.

edited Feb 15 '18 at 21:24

gerrit

11,610
3
50
96

answered Feb 15 '18 at 19:55

Mark Adler

58,160
3
171
251

Phys.org's write-up of the ArXiv preprint is also interesting. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-tesla-shot-space-collide-earth.html – uhoh Feb 18 '18 at 03:34
1

You may think it's a long way down to the chemist's, but that's just beans compared to space. – Chris B. Behrens Feb 22 '18 at 23:40

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 15 '18 at 15:06

2

There will be no risk because Starman like the other probes, satellites and even the International Space station are so tiny compared to the interplanetary space. And to answer the about the trajectory of Starman: It's gonna leave the earth orbit very soon heading around the Sun, and then it will have an heliocentric orbit there with cyclic approaches to Mars.

edited Feb 15 '18 at 15:06

gerrit

11,610
3
50
96

answered Feb 07 '18 at 14:14

hanzouti

31
2

The plot shown in the question Starman/Roadster in a=1.795 AU orbit, now what's the method to this madness? already shows the projected orbit. – uhoh Feb 07 '18 at 14:36
1

@uhoh There may be a linguistic issue here. Hanzouti wrote heading the Sun, perhaps meant orbiting the Sun ("heading around")? – gerrit Feb 15 '18 at 14:58
@gerrit are you able to edit the answer and make an adjustment? I'm happy to switch from down to up vote and delete the comment. It doesn't look like hanzouti is in a rush to make any changes. – uhoh Feb 15 '18 at 15:04
1

@uhoh I did. The linked orbit is still completely wrong though, but what do you expect from the Daily Mail. However, despite that orbit being wrong, the conclusion in the answer that there is no practical threat is not affected. – gerrit Feb 15 '18 at 15:07
@gerrit good job, you should get a good samaritan lapel pin. – uhoh Feb 15 '18 at 15:13

Starman trajectory in future

2 Answers2

Linked