Tesla Roadster, Launched Towards Mars, Recognized As Space Debris

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 02:36

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, has published the open source code of his Catalog of Artificial Space Objects. According to The Drive, the famous electric car TeslRoadster is among the 57,424 items included in it.

• McDowell spent about four decades creating his catalog: he began to monitor the activity of earthlings in space exploration as a child.
• The list, compiled by the scientist, includes about two thousand active satellites, sorted into categories, as well as many objects floating in space that belong to the category of debris - for example, debris or equipment lost or deliberately discarded by astronauts. There are also bags of real human garbage: the astronomer counted 347 of them.
• The astronomer published his catalog in the public domain, fearing an untimely death - for example, due to infection with COVID-19.

• TeslRoadster took off into space to music by David Bowie on February 6, 2018, along with the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. At the moment, the electric car, according to the WhereIsRoadster resource, is approaching Earth and Mars, being at a distance of 88.5 million and 21 million kilometers from the planets, respectively. The roadster has moved away from the Sun by 223.45 million kilometers.