On February 6, SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket currently in use and put a red Tesla sports car with a dummy named Starman in space. Since then many questions have been raised about the car and its rider, one of it being, is there a chance it will ever crash into Earth?
The answer is yes, according to scientists at the University of Toronto.
Using trajectory studies and orbital simulation experiments, they have published a report on the possible outcomes. A version of the article has been uploaded on the arXiv website.
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“It will likely end up colliding with Earth or Venus, but there’s no need to panic since the probability of that happening even within the next million years is very small,” says Hanno Rein, director of the university's Centre for Planetary Sciences and author of the research, in a release.
The researchers say the probability of it colliding with Earth in the next one million years is 6 %. There is a 2.5% chance of it colliding with Venus in the next one million years.
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They also reported that in 2091, there will be a close encounter when the car will pass within a few hundred thousand kilometres of Earth.
“Each time it passes Earth, the car will get a gravitational kick,” says Dan Tamayo, a postdoctoral fellow at the University and co-author of the paper “Depending on the details of these encounters, the Tesla can be kicked onto a wider or smaller orbit, so it’s random. Over time the orbit will undergo what’s called a random walk, similar to the fluctuations we see in the stock market, that will allow it to wander the inner solar system.”
Even if you live to see the collision, you would only see a bright steak of light, as most of the car will get burned up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere.