researcher have found that Elon Musk ’s Tesla Roadster railway car , launched towards the orbital plane of Mars , has a modest but not insignificant opportunity of hitting Earth in the next few million years .
write in their newspaper , available onarXivand to be publish in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , the team from the University of Toronto in Canada say there was a 6 percentage chance of it hitting Earth in the next million years . That rises to 10 percentage over 3 million years .
The team , who specialise in orbital mechanics , used their existing models to feign 240 next possible paths for the car , launched on SpaceX’sFalcon Heavy rocketon February 6 . Although they remark it is punishing to get exact figures due to its chaotic range , it is possible to determine statistical probabilities of collisions far into the future .
“ We have all the software ready , and when we attend the launch last week we think , ‘ Let ’s see what go on , ’ ” Hanno Rein , the study ’s star author , articulate inScience Magazine .
“ So we ran the [ Tesla ’s ] orbit forward for several million eld . ”
The car is on anelliptical orbitlasting 1.5 years that admit it out to roughly 1.7 AU ( astronomical building block , 1 AU is the Earth - Sun length ) , about the scope of Mars . It then swings inward to about 0.99 AU before manoeuver out again .
The squad found that the railway car ’s first close encounter with Earth take place in 2091 , when it will draw close to about the same distance as the Moon and possibly be visible to scope on Earth . After that , there are a number of unlike possibilities , depending on what happens to its orbital itinerary as a result of interacting with other bodies .
Some of the outcomes gave the car a 2.5 percent opportunity of hitting Venus within the next million years , while there was a tiny probability of it hitting the Sun in 3 million years . There ’s a 50 percent fortune the car will live on for a few tens of millions of year . Earth seemed to be the chief target though , although we probably do n’t have too much to worry about .
“ It will either burn up or perchance one component will reach the open , ” Rein said . “ There is no risk to wellness and safety whatsoever . ”
And that ’s even if the car survive that long in its current sort . By some prevision , it will have been mostlystripped awayby radiation within just a year . If it ever does make it back to Earth , it might not seem too recognizable .
