You can now track where Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is in space

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You can now track where Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is in space

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  • A website called Where Is Roadster is tracking Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster in space.
  • The site, which is not affiliated with SpaceX, estimates the car is more than 2 million miles from Earth.
  • Musk cheekily tweeted about the site on Sunday, saying his car "must be parked around here somewhere."


Earlier this month, SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world, that used Elon Musk's very own Tesla Roadster as its payload.

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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch.

For about 12 hours the Roadster, helmed by a spacesuit-wearing dummy  dubbed "Starman," broadcast live video footage as it soared through space. But eventually the electric car's batteries ran out and so too did the footage.

But one website is allowing ordinary stargazers to track the car's progress compared to the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

A link to the site, Where Is Roadster, was tweeted out by Musk on Sunday along with the tongue-in-cheek comment, "I'm sure it's parked around here somewhere."

Where Is Roadster was created by engineer Ben Pearson using data from NASA's JPL Horizons.

At around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, the site put Musk's car at 2.3 million miles from Earth, moving away at a speed of 6,747 miles/hour.

According to the calculations the Roadster has exceeded its 36,000 mile warranty more than 595 times.

While astronomers have been able to spot the car in the night sky, Pearson has created an animation to show what Earth and the Moon would look like if the car's cameras were still broadcasting.

Watch the video here:

 

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