Something that I though of in all the discussions about the recent SpaceX launch.
There have a been a few questions about the long term fate of the Roadster. Elon muttered about millions - perhaps billions of years.
However I wonder about that. The orbit is essentially from an apohelion of 2.61 AU to a perihelion of 0.98. Which is of course as expected as the final burn occurred whilst in Earth orbit. So, the orbit brings the Tesla back near the Earth. It seems to me that there is a good chance that the Earth is going to be modifying the Roadster’s orbit, and I wonder if in time either the orbit period will become locked to a multiple of the Earth’s, or if the orbit is more likely to be unstable and the fate of the Roadster is to be ejected from the solar system sooner rather than later. (Which would also be pretty cool.) I guess there is a very small but non-zero chance it hits the Earth or moon within the odd million or so years.
So, any thoughts from those with more than a passing knowledge of orbital mechanics? What might the betting be on the chances of the various fates?
Then again, I will put money on it being on display in the Smithsonian before any worse fate befalls it.
That’s a bit of a mischaracterization. The article says basically that the upholstery could crackle within a year, and the rest of it could last for millions.
the link says radiation would also degrade the carbon fiber parts. it’ll probably be easily recognizable as a Roadster for a long time, but it’ll look like crap before too long.
From what I read, they said there is a small chance it could crash into Mars at some point. That makes me wonder, doesn’t that present a risk of biological contamination of Mars with Earth life? Did they make any effort to sterilize the Roadster like the NASA Office of Planetary Protection does with their interplanetary probes? It seems like it would be difficult to do that, since it was already a used, fully assembled car with other items in it as well.
Depending on its orbital inclination, it might be significantly above or below the plane of Mars’ orbit when it crosses, in which case it would have zero chance of hitting Mars.
When I asked JPL’s HORIZONS Web Interface to work out the epherides for that Tesla, the resulting table showed me that its orbital path was at most 1.09 degrees below the ecliptic, so orbital inclination is pretty low.
