Sinister Security: Falcon Heavy

Elon Musk’s Tesla Overshot Mars’ Orbit And Is Headed To The Asteroid Be

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Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, which launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy earlier today, is going farther out into the Solar System than originally planned. The car was supposed to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars’ orbit.

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But the rocket carrying the car seems to have overshot that trajectory and has put the Tesla in an orbit that extends out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Third burn successful. Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt. pic.twitter.com/bKhRN73WHF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2018

After launch, the Tesla cruised through space for a good six hours — a trip that was also live-streamed by SpaceX. This “coast” phase was meant to show off a special orbital maneuver for the US Air Force, before the rocket completed one final engine burn in space and put the car on its final orbit. It looks like that burn might have happened somewhere over Southern California, as some people in the area started reporting sightings of the rocket igniting in the night sky after 9:30PM ET.

But now it seems that engine ignition worked a little too well. SpaceX CEO Musk tweeted out a map of the Roadster’s final orbit after the burn, showing just how far out the car will travel. And it looks like it’s going so far into the asteroid belt that it will get relatively close to the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres.

It’s unclear what exactly will happen to the car: before the Tesla launched, Musk said that there was an extremely tiny chance that the vehicle would ever hit Mars. But there’s been no clarification about how this new path will affect the car’s chances of running into some other space object. And planetary scientists on Twitter want more answers about the exact orbit to calculate the Tesla’s odds of a collision, and how long it will actually last in deep space.

The Tesla’s journey certainly demonstrates the Falcon Heavy’s capabilities of putting objects into deep space. Plus, some space companies, like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, are working on technologies to mine water from asteroids someday. They might be happy to know that the Falcon Heavy is capable of sending their spacecraft into the asteroid belt.

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SpaceX Has Received Permission from the US Government to Launch Elon Musk’s Car toward Mars

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SpaceX is preparing to launch Falcon Heavy, the biggest rocket in the company’s history, for the first time this week. The 230-foot-tall, three-booster launcher is scheduled to blast off Tuesday between 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX says Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful rocket in the world.

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This week’s launch is a test that SpaceX founder Elon Musk wanted to happen as early as 2013, though he recently said it could end in an explosion. Instead of putting a standard “mass simulator” or dummy payload atop Falcon Heavy, Musk — who once launched a wheel of cheese into orbit — will put his personal 2008 midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster on top of the monster rocket. In an Instagram post over the weekend, Musk also revealed that the car will carry a dummy driver (who Musk is calling "Starman") wearing a SpaceX space suit.

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said in an Instagram post in December, “so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Tesla roadster Elon Musk

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However, all rocket payloads need a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch, and Musk’s sleek electric car is no exception. The FAA granted SpaceX that permission on Friday in staunchly formal notice, as reported by Keith Cowing at NASA Watch.

“Space Exploration Technologies is authorized to conduct … [a] flight of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) transporting the modified Tesla Roadster (mass simulator) to a hyperbolic orbit,” the FAA permit said.

What it means to blast an electric car into deep space

Launch Complex 39A is the same launch pad that NASA wheeled Saturn V rockets onto in the 1960s and 1970s — those were used to fly Apollo astronauts to the moon. Musk hopes to continue that tradition of space exploration with future Falcon Heavy launches, including a private lunar voyage for two as-yet-unnamed citizens.

The FAA permit refers to the Tesla roadster's “hyperbolic orbit”: the eccentric path that Musk hopes his car takes through space. Also known as a Hohmann transfer orbit, the path would send the car out to Mars orbit and back toward the sun on a nearly infinite loop.

“The payload will be ... playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit,” Musk said in December.

While Musk has said the car is “one of the silliest things” he ever imagined launching, its two-ton mass and ambitious orbit is no joke, as journalist Eric Berger points out in a recent Ars Technica story.

“No company has ever launched a private payload beyond geostationary orbit before,” Berger said, referring to a roughly 22,500-mile-high orbit above Earth. “This [Hohmann transfer] orbit is critical to understanding how Musk plans to sell the rocket and what its flight, after all these years of waiting, means for the aerospace industry.”

If Falcon Heavy doesn’t blow up (and immortalizes Musk’s on- and off-Earth legacies), SpaceX will move forward with launches for paying customers, including the US military, perhaps later this year. More customers would likely line up to place payloads atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. While it costs about $90 million per launch, that's roughly a third of the cost of any similarly powerful rocket built by SpaceX's competitors. What makes that price possible, in part, is that the multi-million booster cores — each of which each has nine Merlin engines and stands about 134 feet tall — is fully reusable.

With enough fuel and the right trajectory, Falcon Heavy has enough thrust to launch a payload heavier than a car to Pluto, let alone Mars. That would appeal to NASA, which is gearing up to launch several planet- and moon-bound spacecraft in the coming years. The space agency is in an ever-present budget pinch — and behind-schedule in building its own super-heavy-lift rocket, called Space Launch System.

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It's Finally Happening: Elon Musk Tweets Official SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Date

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SpaceX Will Launch 'The World's Most Powerful Rocket' This Month: Falcon Heavy To Blast Off With The Billionaire's Tesla Roadster Onboard On A Mission To Mars

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Elon Musk has finally announced SpaceX will launch 'the world's most powerful rocket' later this month with his own tesla electric car on board. The Falcon Heavy 'megarocket' will fire beyond orbit from the former Apollo 11 moon rocket launch pad at the Kennedy Space Centre near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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Musk said the launch vehicle will blast off at the 'end of the month' on an unmanned mission with a unique payload - the billionaire's cherry red 2008 Tesla Roadster, which will be fired toward Mars.

The rocket will use 27 engines and three separate re-usable cores that will return to Earth after liftoff during the test flight, which is set to be one of the firm's most technically complex challenges to date. Before the maiden launch, a full test firing of the rocket's engines is expected next week, Musk said.

“Falcon Heavy now vertical on the former Apollo 11 moon rocket launchpad,” he wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “At 2,500 tons of thrust, equal to 18 Boeing 747 aircraft at full throttle, it will be the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two. Excitement on launch day guaranteed, one way or another. Hold-down test fire next week. Launch end of the month.”

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When it lifts off for the first time in late January, the Falcon Heavy will become the most powerful rocket in the world thanks to its 5.1 million pounds of thrust generated through 27 Merlin engines. The vast rocket, which is ultimately three Falcon 9 rockets linked together, will have the combined thrust to eventually launch 140,000 pounds (63,500kg) of cargo into orbit.

The mission marks SpaceX's most ambitious project to date. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, with the aim of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. The 46-year-old South African is also the CEO of Tesla, and predicts Falcon Heavy's payload will stay in deep space for a while. A photo of the unusual cargo - Musk's cherry red 2008 Tesla Roadster - was released last month.

Images released by SpaceX show an original Roadster perched on a large cone inside the Falcon Heavy on what appears to be a secure mount to keep it stationary as the rocket makes its maiden flight.

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said in December. Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon Heavy will lift off and enter Earth's orbit, before two of its booster rockets separate off and return to Earth at Cape Canaveral in controlled landings.

The rocket's central core will then separate from the main module, containing Musk's car, and begin its own controlled descent back to Earth, landing on the firm's 'Of Course I Still Love You' drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. The main module will continue its trajectory into 'deep space', the billionaire said, with a destination set for the orbit of Mars 140 million miles (225 million kilometres) away. Musk has said the payload 'will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent.'

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In a Washington, D.C., speech last July the Tesla founder which said Falcon Heavy is one of the most difficult and technically complex projects SpaceX has ever undertaken.

“There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy,” he said during the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development Conference. “Real good chance that the vehicle doesn't make it to orbit. I want to make sure to set expectations accordingly.”

Musk has spent the proceeding months building up hype for the historic launch with a series of social media posts. Last month he posted an image to Twitter of people stoof next to a landed Falcon Heavy rocket to give an idea of the vehicle's scale. He tweeted:

“Falcon Heavy launching from same @NASA pad as the Saturn V Apollo 11 moon rocket. It was 50% higher thrust with five F-1 engines at 7.5M lb-F. I love that rocket so much.”

He also confirmed the rocket will have a 'max thrust at lift-off is 5.1 million pounds or 2300 metric tons,' adding the first mission will run at 92 per cent capacity.

“Falcon Heavy to launch next month from Apollo 11 pad at the Cape. Will have double thrust of next largest rocket. Guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another,” Musk originally posted.

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Sinister Security

Elon Musk’s Tesla Overshot Mars’ Orbit And Is Headed To The Asteroid Be

SpaceX Has Received Permission from the US Government to Launch Elon Musk’s Car toward Mars

It's Finally Happening: Elon Musk Tweets Official SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Date

SpaceX Will Launch 'The World's Most Powerful Rocket' This Month: Falcon Heavy To Blast Off With The Billionaire's Tesla Roadster Onboard On A Mission To Mars

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