About a week ago SpaceX, whose CEO is Elon Musk, launched their Falcon Heavy spaceship, which is the most powerful rocket since Saturn V took astronauts to the moon. The payload for the Falcon Heavy was Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster 2, a luxury sports car created by Musk's other company.
The car even had a passenger, an empty SpaceX suit made to look like an actual astronaut named "Starman". After about six hours Starman and the car were on an escape trajectory that Musk hoped would allow for the car to be put in orbit around the sun and have a close pass by with Mars.
However, a few hours later, Musk tweeted out on his Twitter account that they had overshot the trajectory a little bit and the car was headed for the asteroid belt instead. However, according to Space.com, the car seems to be headed on a path that will allow it to pass closer to Mars than the asteroid belt.
There is now a website created by Ben Pearson, a self-described nerd. He has created the website whereisroadster.com, which allows users to see where the car is relative to Earth and Mars and also tells you how fast the car is moving. There is even a little section that tells you how many times the car has exceeded its 36,000-mile warranty.
Pearson is making use of Jet Propulsion Lab's (JPL's) HORIZONS System, which tracks objects within our solar system. Pearson uses the data from the system to calculate things such as the speed, distance, and even gas mileage.
It is a very interesting website and something that you may enjoy checking out during your break.
