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What will happen to Elon Musk’s Tesla on its space journey to Mars?

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8 years ago

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SpaceX has completed the last crucial step of Falcon Heavy’s inaugural test flight after successfully launching Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster out of Earth’s orbit, on a trajectory into deep space. But what will happen to the car and ‘Starman’ as it makes its long journey to Mars? Let us explore the details.

Although Elon Musk indicated that the Tesla had been placed in an orbit that would nearly extend to the beginnings of the solar system’s first asteroid belt (on average more than 150 million miles away from Earth’s orbit), SpaceX updated that orbit estimate about 24 hours later and confirmed that the orbit was considerably closer to Mars’ orbit than the asteroid belt beyond the Red Planet.

Starman gives one final farewell to Earth as he departs for deep space aboard Musk’s Tesla Roadster. (SpaceX)

Understandably, the ultimate destination and state of the Roadster have been the source of an array of questions from those less familiar with interplanetary travel and orbital mechanics – most people.

 

How exactly does space travel work?

Before delving into the details, it’s crucial that I try to give everyone equal footing in the form of a basic understanding of what, how, and whens of spaceflight. To reach orbit, Falcon Heavy launched its Tesla payload horizontally. Once it rose vertically above the majority of Earth’s atmosphere, the rocket angled over until it was essentially thrusting parallel to Earth’s surface. Think of it like spinning a ball on a string: only after a certain speed will the ball successfully spin in a circle – spin too slow and the ball will simply fall. Reaching Earth orbit is very similar in concept: Falcon Heavy boosts the upper stage above Earth’s atmosphere, and the upper stage ignites and gains as much horizontal speed as possible.

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All this time, both it and its Tesla payload are being pulled down by Earth’s gravity, but at a certain speed (8 kilometers per second, or ~18,000 mph), the rocket and its payload end up going faster around the Earth than its gravity can pull them down. A famous analogy can be found in a simple tennis ball: thrown normally, the ball will arc over and eventually fall to the ground. However, if a ball is thrown fast enough (and was also able to avoid being incinerated by friction against the atmosphere), one can imagine the ball going over the horizon, traveling around the Earth, and coming right back to the thrower.

Elon Musk walks among his recovered Falcon Heavy boosters at LZ-1 and 2. (Elon Musk)

Throwing a ball (or spaceship) into orbit

Amazingly, this becomes a far more reasonable proposition when dealing with asteroids, comets, and moons with much light gravity than Earth’s “1G.” For example, on Mars’ tiny moon Phobos, an astronaut could very nearly escape from the moon by running, and could almost effortlessly throw a ball fast enough to orbit Phobos (a blistering 25 mph would be required). Earth is just like that, just much, much, much larger, and with a thick atmosphere that both keeps us, humans, alive and also makes it quite a bit more difficult for us to get into orbit.

Back to Earth orbit. The first point of stability (when you are going faster forward than the Earth can pull you down) is called “low Earth orbit,” (LEO) being roughly the lowest height and velocity necessary to stably orbit the Earth. This is approximately where the International Space Station (ISS) is located (~ 250 miles above). Famously, astronauts and satellites at this altitude travel around the Earth once every 90 minutes, half in pure sunlight, half in the darkness of Earth’s own shadow – essentially a special sunrise and sunset every three-quarter of an hour.

Mars’ largest moon Phobos captured at the edge of the planet’s limb. Phobos is less than 15 miles in diameter. (ESA/Mars Express)

Now, expand that model of Earth and the Roadster in orbit around it to the entire solar system. In this model, Earth and all other objects are orbiting the Sun at different distances and speeds, like different bands of the same tree ring. The solar system is massive, however, and thus everything has to be scaled up: for example, the Earth orbits the Sun at 30 kilometers per second (~70,000 mph), nearly four times faster than our humble Tesla in LEO.

Remember: when orbiting Earth, objects are still under the firm hold of the planet’s gravity, but merely moving so fast that they are in a constant state of freefall. Take away the air, and being on the ISS is akin to skydiving, but if the skydive never ended. To truly escape Earth’s gravity and head to the Moon, Mars, or beyond, a rocket needs to go even faster still. In the case of the Roadster, this meant first speeding up to 8 km/s to reach a stable orbit around Earth, followed several hours later by one final burn that gave the payload another 3-4 km/s of speed. On the scale of the solar system, Roadster’s journey away from Earth can be thought of like, well, a Roadster making its way to the top of a steep hill. After climbing to the top, the Roadster is nearly out of energy but has just enough to accelerate as it begins its way down the other side. About six hours after launch, the rocket’s upper stage successfully crested the summit of Earth’s gravitational hill before rocketing down the other side, on its way to deep space, Mars, and beyond.

In essence, the rocket moved Musk’s Tesla from an orbit around Earth to an orbit around the Sun itself. Just as Earth takes 365 days (a year) to travel once around the Sun, the Roadster will complete an orbit of the sun every once in awhile, likely closer to the two Earth years it takes for Mars to complete its orbit. Similarly, evidenced by Earth and all the other planets in the solar system, orbiting the sun is typically very stable – humans do not exactly live in fear of the Earth falling into the sun, we just keep going around and around. Like the planets, Musk’s Roadster will almost certainly remain in its current orbit for millions of years – maybe even a billion years – quietly completing an orbit around the sun every two or so years for what is effectively an eternity on a human scale. Eventually, it’s possible that the Roadster and Starman will be pulled over time by the gravity of Earth in such a way that it reenters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up, but that is unlikely to happen for thousands of millennia.

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Where is the Roadster headed?

The graphic tweeted by Musk serves as a good initial explanation of complex terms used to describe orbital mechanics. Because it is not circular, the orbit is known as elliptical, while the points closest to (perihelion) and furthest from (aphelion) the Sun also have their special names. The AU mentioned in the graphic refers to astronomical units, a standard measurement based upon the average distance between the Earth and the Sun – approximately 93 million miles. For comparison, a full trip around the Earth’s equator is a little less than 25,000 miles. Space is unfathomably immense.

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Falcon Heavy’s upper stage appears to have simply burned until it ran out of fuel, and managed with the far end of its orbit at about 1.61 astronautical units (~250 million km) is considerably less than Musk’s pre-launch press conference suggestion that the Roadster was expected to end up in an orbit of 380 to 450 million kilometers.

 

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Is the Roadster going to Mars?

Sadly, the answer is a hard “no.” At most, the Tesla might have been sent into an orbit around the sun (heliocentric orbit) with a very close approach to Mars – a flyby, so to speak. It appears that SpaceX managed to get quite close to that original goal, and it is entirely possible that Starman’s Roadster could pass close to Mars at points along its orbit, although there will be no way to capture or transmit images from the Roadster.

While there will be no cameras to capture it, it looks like Starman could actually – one day – pass close to the Red Planet on his billion year journey. (SpaceX)

Perhaps most importantly, to launch the Roadster into such a high orbit, SpaceX had to ensure that the rocket’s upper stage could coast for multiple hours in Earth orbit and still be able to precisely reignite its Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine for a final burn. By successfully accomplishing precisely that, SpaceX has taken a huge step towards being able to compete with the United Launch Alliance for all government and defense-related launch contracts, even those requiring direct placement into geostationary orbit (GEO), versus a slower but more common geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Not coincidentally, that capability also means that SpaceX can efficiently send payloads beyond Earth orbit, as they have now done for the first time with Musk’s Tesla Roadster.

 

How long will it take?

Because the Roadster is not actually going to any planets, moons, or asteroids, it will never reach them. However, the electric car’s newfound orbital home means that it will at least be far, far from Earth – at points, it’s trajectory will cross closest to the orbits of Mars and Earth. It will take a minimum of several months for the Roadster to reach those distances, even at its blistering speed of 12 kilometers per second relative to Earth. Jonathan McDowell, a practicing astronomer, estimated that the Roadster would pass Mars orbit –  to be clear, not arriving at Mars, simply reaching the same distance away from the Sun as Mars orbits – in July 2018, approximately five months from today.

What’s going to happen to Starman and the Roadster?

Soaring through the hard vacuum of deep space, not a whole lot can be expected to happen to Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster and Starman. As mentioned, the high heliocentric orbit it was placed in will be incredibly stable, likely allowing the car to remain in deep space for tens of millions of years. Now, that is not to say that future human explorers millions of years from now would recognize whatever remained – deep space is characterized by a relatively extreme radiation environment that will not be kind to many components that make up the Roadster’s structure. Carbon fiber, plastic, leather, and paint all contain organic components that will be assaulted by an environment far harsher than that in and around Earth.

Still, hyperbolic claims that “Radiation Will Tear Elon Musk’s Rocket Car to Bits in a Year” are ridiculously exaggerated. Vacuum is characterized by the absence of anything, and that includes all conceivable methods of erosion. While high energy radiation found in deep space can and likely will shred the Tesla’s structural integrity and eventually bleach or discolor the car, the Roadster will be perfectly suspended in microgravity (basically zero gravity) conditions with almost no chance whatsoever of impacts by even tiny space debris like micrometeorites. If an aspiring car collector tried to recover the eccentric and historic trophy from space in several centuries/millennia, Roadster would very likely fall to pieces or even crumble to dust when moved or placed in an environment with any significant gravity. But, it will almost without a doubt retain its recognizable shape almost indefinitely, at least on a human scale. Starman can be expected to react very similarly.

hyperbolic claims that “Radiation Will Tear Elon Musk’s Rocket Car to Bits in a Year” are ridiculously exaggerated.

Finally, it appears that SpaceX has not installed any method of power generation or communication on Starman’s ride, meaning that humans likely saw their last views of the vehicle after SpaceX cut the live feed to Starman. This sadly means that there will be no photo ops with Starman soaring past Mars or exploring the asteroid belt, although that option will certainly be reserved for any future eccentric, Muskian test payloads.

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Why does sending a car into deep space matter?

Ultimately, this final success is an invaluable cherry on top of what was already a stunning achievement. Without a single scrubbed launch attempt or unintended hold during the final countdown, SpaceX’s first launch of what is now the most capable operational rocket in the world was a perfect success in almost all regards. Although the massive rocket’s center booster failed to land aboard the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) due to an apparent shortage of the chemical components used to reignite the booster’s engines, both side boosters were recovered on land with what can only be described as well-oiled expertise. Meanwhile, the rocket simply survived the launch in general, didn’t destroy the pad, successfully tested its unproven side booster separation mechanism, and launched an eccentric payload into the highest orbit yet achieved by the commercial launch company.

In the case of Elon Musk, it certainly appears that it is possible to – at least once and awhile – have one’s cake and eat it too. Follow along live as launch photographer Tom Cross and I cover these exciting proceedings as close to live as possible.

Teslarati   –   Instagram – Twitter

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Tom Cross – Twitter

Eric Ralph – Twitter

 

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk reveals unfortunate truth of Tesla Full Self-Driving development

In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.

Published

1 hour ago

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April 7, 2026

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Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite is one of the most significant technological developments in terms of passenger travel in decades, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows, even with major strides in safety, CEO Elon Musk revealed.

In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.

The clip shows a Model 3 traveling at over 65 mph on a foggy, rain-soaked highway when a pedestrian suddenly steps into traffic.

Full Self-Driving instantly detects the threat and swerves safely, preventing what could have been a fatal collision for both the pedestrian and the driver’s cousin.

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Musk’s response was unequivocal:

“Tesla self-driving saves a lot of lives – the statistics are unequivocal. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, of course.” Even with a projected 10x safety improvement over human drivers, FSD would still prevent roughly 90% of the world’s approximately one million annual auto fatalities. The remaining 10%—roughly 100,000 deaths—would expose Tesla to relentless lawsuits. Meanwhile, the vast majority of lives saved would go unnoticed. “The 90% who are still alive mostly won’t even know that Tesla saved them. Nonetheless, it is the right thing to do.”

This “unfortunate truth,” as Musk implicitly framed it, highlights a fundamental asymmetry in how society perceives safety technology. Human drivers cause the overwhelming majority of crashes through distraction, fatigue, or error.

Yet when FSD errs, the incident becomes headline news and a courtroom target. Prevented tragedies, by contrast, leave no trace.

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Survivors simply continue their journeys, unaware of the split-second intervention that kept them alive. The result is a distorted public narrative that amplifies failures while rendering successes invisible.

We have seen this through various headlines throughout the years, including the mainstream media’s obsession with only mentioning the manufacturer’s name in the instance of an accident when it is “Tesla.”

Opinion: Tesla Autopilot NHTSA investigation headlines are out of control

The video’s real-world example underscores FSD’s current capabilities. In near-zero visibility, the system’s cameras and neural network reacted faster than any human could, demonstrating the life-saving potential Musk cites.

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Tesla’s latest safety data already shows FSD (Supervised) performing significantly better than the U.S. average, with crashes occurring far less frequently per mile driven.

Still, regulatory scrutiny, liability concerns, and media focus on edge-case failures continue to slow widespread adoption. Musk’s frank admission suggests Tesla is prepared to push forward despite the legal and perceptual headwinds.

As FSD edges closer to unsupervised autonomy, Musk’s post serves as both a progress report and a reality check. The technology is already saving lives today.

The unfortunate truth is that proving it and scaling it responsibly will require society to value statistical lives saved as much as dramatic stories of those lost. In the race toward safer roads, perception may prove as formidable an obstacle as the fog and rain in that viral video.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3: First Impressions

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3 hours ago

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April 7, 2026

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Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving v14.3 to Early Access Program (EAP) members earlier today, and I had the opportunity to see some of the improvements that were made from v14.2.2.5.

While a lot of things got better, and I truly enjoyed using Full Self-Driving again after being stuck with the widely confusing and frustrating v14.2.2.5, Tesla still has one major problem on its hands, and it has to do with Navigation and Routing. I truly believe those issues will be the biggest challenges Tesla will face with autonomy: the car simply going the correct way, not conflicting with what the navigation says, and taking the simplest and most ideal route to a destination.

Here’s what I noticed as an improvement with my first hour with v14.3. This is not a full review, nor is it reflective of everything I will likely experience with this new version. This is simply what I saw as a noticeable improvement from the past version, v14.2.2.5.

There is also a more streamlined version on X, available at the thread below:

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Yellow Light Behavior is Significantly Better

On v14.2.2.5, I had so many instances of the car slamming the brakes on to stop at a yellow light when it was clearly the safer option to proceed through. There were several times when the car would be about 20 feet from the line, traveling at 15-20 MPH, the light would turn yellow, and it would slam the brakes to stop. I would nudge it through yellow lights constantly because of this by putting my foot on the accelerator.

The instances I’m talking about here would not have been close calls — the car would have likely moved through the intersection completely before the light would turn red.

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On multiple occasions this evening, FSD proceeded through yellow lights safely, without hesitation or any brake stabbing. It was refreshing:

This was a huge complaint with v14.2.2.5. Sometimes, it’s a safer option to go through a yellow light, especially when you have traffic behind you. It’s a great way to get rear-ended.

Parking Performance

I had four instances of parking, and FSD v14.3 really did a flawless job. I was very impressed with how solid it was, but also with how efficiently it moved into the spot. When there was traffic around with past versions, I usually chose to park manually just because FSD took its time getting into a spot. I don’t see that being an issue anymore.

I complained about parking a lot and shared several images on X and Facebook of those examples:

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No issues with it this evening. 4/4. Here are two looks:

Highway Performance

FSD v14.3 passed the five cars shown in this image:

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The sixth was 200-300 yards ahead of the fifth. In v14.2.2.5, FSD would usually stay in the left lane, especially on Hurry and Mad Max. It did not do that, as it instead chose to get back over in the right lane after passing the final car.

Speed was not much of a concern here, even though it was going 21 MPH over. Although it was fast, I did have a line of cars behind me traveling at the same speed, and FSD had just merged about a half mile prior, so I chose to let it continue.

There were no instances of camping in the left lane for extended periods of time. I do want to do more testing with the Speed Profiles because they were in need of some work with the previous version. I am starting to side with those who want a Max Speed setting, which was removed last year.

Navigation and Routing Still Need Work

I was heading back toward where I came from, so I turned “Avoid Highways” on to take a different way. This confused the Routing system, and instead of turning left, then right, as the Routing said, the car turned right, then indicated for another right, basically going in a big rectangle. The car ignored the second right-hand turn and continued straight. I ended up turning “Avoid Highways” off and letting the car pick the same routing option as what took me here.

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I have truly complained so much about Navigation and Routing that I’m starting to feel sort of bad. It is obviously such a massive challenge for some reason, but I am confident it will improve. I recall seeing Tesla hiring someone for this role a few months back, so perhaps there is hope for it to get better.

Smarter Behavior When Approaching Exits/Routing

This probably should be grouped in with Highway Behavior, but I wanted to highlight it on its own.

The highway exit pictured was always frustrating for v14.2.2.5. In the Hurry speed profile, I have seen it try to execute passes on multiple cars with as little as 0.6 miles to spare before taking the exit.

With three cars ahead of it, it chose to reduce speed and just wait until the exit. It was refreshing to see an improvement here, so I hope this behavior persists. Sometimes there’s just no reason to pass when you’re less than a mile from getting off the highway anyway.

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Larger Visibility Warnings

Tesla seems to have increased the size of these “Camera Visibility Limited” warnings. Previously, they were just small thumbnails:

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Stop Sign Behavior

This is probably the biggest improvement of all, because how it behaved at Stop Signs in v14.2.2.5 was so incredibly terrible and disruptive to the flow of a busy intersection.

There are several four-way, all-stop intersections near me. In the past, FSD would stop well behind the Stop Sign or the white-painted line on the road. It would then inch forward, stopping again at this line, essentially making two stops at a single intersection.

If there is visibility, I don’t truly care where FSD stops, as long as it stops once. Stopping twice just isn’t ideal or logical. I can’t imagine many humans would do it, I know I wouldn’t.

I didn’t have that issue this evening:

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This was pretty tight, too, in the sense that both my car and the other one got to the intersection at the same time. FSD may have stopped first, but the other vehicle was probably around the same point that I was when FSD decided to stop. I was happy to see the assertiveness to proceed; it felt like it was ideal to just go through. I was happy it didn’t stop a second time up at the line. I’d be fine if it stopped at the line, as long as that was the only stop it made.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 rolls out: here’s what’s new

We are in EAP and will be on the road with v14.3 in the coming hours, so we’ll have a lot of things to discuss over the next few days, especially coming from v14.2.2.5, which I called the most “confusing” FSD release of all time.

Published

8 hours ago

on

April 7, 2026

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Tesla has officially started rolling out Full Self-Driving v14.3 to Early Access Program (EAP) members, and there are a lot of new improvements.

We are in EAP and will be on the road with v14.3 in the coming hours, so we’ll have a lot of things to discuss over the next few days, especially coming from v14.2.2.5, which I called the most “confusing” FSD release of all time.

Tesla brought out a lot of improvements, according to the v14.3 release notes, which list a vast number of fixes, new features, and new capabilities.

Here’s what Tesla’s release notes for the v14.3 release state:

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  • Improved parking location pin prediction, now shown on a map with a P icon.
  •  Increased decisiveness of parking spot selection and maneuvering.
  • Rewrote the Al compiler and runtime from the ground up with MLIR, resulting in 20% faster reaction time and improving model iteration speed.
  • Enhanced response to emergency vehicles, school buses, right-of-way violators, and other rare vehicles.
  • Mitigated unnecessary lane biasing and minor tailgating behaviors.
  • Improved handling of small animals by focusing RL training on harder examples and adding rewards for better proactive safety.
  • Improved traffic light handling at complex intersections with compound lights, curved roads, and yellow light stopping – driven by training on hard RL examples sourced from the Tesla fleet.
  • Upgraded the Reinforcement Learning (RL) stage of training the FSD neural network, resulting in improvements in a wide variety of driving scenarios.
  • Upgraded the neural network vision encoder, improving understanding in rare and low-visibility scenarios, strengthening 3D geometry understanding, and expanding traffic sign understanding.
  • Improved handling for rare and unusual objects extending, hanging, or leaning into the vehicle path by sourcing infrequent events from the fleet.
  • Improved handling of temporary system degradations by maintaining control and automatically recovering without driver intervention, reducing unnecessary disengagements.

Tesla also listed a handful of future improvements as well:

  • Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling
  • Add pothole avoidance
  • Improve driver monitoring system sensitivity with better eye gaze tracking, eye wear handling, and higher accuracy in variable lighting situations

CEO Elon Musk has said that v14.3 could be “where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.” We have high expectations for this release because, in a lot of ways, v14.2’s final version was extremely disappointing and seemed to be a regression more than anything.

Nevertheless, Full Self-Driving v14.3 is going to be quite an interesting test, considering this is also the first time Musk has stated it will feel like the car will be “sentient.”

Reasoning will be a bigger piece of the puzzle with this release, although there were some elements of it in v14.2.

Tesla AI Head says future FSD feature has already partially shipped

We plan to travel plenty of miles with it over the next few days, so we’ll keep you posted on what our thoughts are.

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