Published on February 5th, 2018 | by James Ayre0
Elon Musk Sending His Tesla Roadster Past Mars Via SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket On February 6th
February 5th, 2018 by James Ayre
View from SpaceX Launch Control. Apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth. pic.twitter.com/QljN2VnL1O
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2018
I hadn’t intended to write an article on this subject, given our focus here at CleanTechnica on cleantech, but since Tesla CEO Elon Musk has brought it up a number of times in recent weeks — and released some images of the payload in question — it seems worth doing.
I’m talking here about the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch, which will play host to Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload, reportedly. That launch is tentatively slated for February 6th, sometime during a 3-hour launch window that opens at 1:30 PM Eastern Time — and has now been granted full approval by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
So, those interested in seeing the inaugural launch of the largest US space launch vehicle since the Saturn 5 rocket (which has been retired for decades now) — one carrying Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s personal first-generation Roadster into a trans-Mar orbit around the Sun — may want to take a glance at the news next week to see how things go (or watch the launch live, if interested).
As seen in the picture above, Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster is already packed and ready to go…with it being an interesting thing to note that the (apparently) first production car to be sent into space is going to an all-electric one.
The Tesla Roadster in question has apparently undergone some modifications in preparation for the launch, but it’s not quite clear what those would be — a removal of potentially dangerous materials, perhaps?
As a bit of further background here — the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that is being tested has been designed with the idea of “colonizing” Mars in mind. As a result, the heavy-lift rocket is one of the largest designs every actually built, and is capable of transporting much higher cargo weights than the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — which is now seeing regular use as a satellite launch and ISS resupply vehicle — can.