Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster won't hit Earth anytime soon

Even though it doesn't obey any earthly speed limit and has a space-suited mannequin for a driver, Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster won't drive up his insurance rates anytime soon. Researchers say the orbiting sports car won't have a really close encounter with Earth until 2091 and could last millions of years before getting totaled in a planetary crackup.

Launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket last week, the Roadster was boosted into an elliptical orbit around the sun. It will pass within about 68.7 million miles of Mars on June 10 and cross the red planet's orbit in July before reaching its farthest distance from the sun -- 154.7 million miles -- on Nov. 9.

The Roadster and its mannequin driver -- known as Starman -- then will fall back toward the inner solar system, picking up speed as they near the low point of the orbit, or perihelion, on Aug. 15, 2019. Perihelion in this case roughly matches the distance of Earth's orbit from the sun, the Tesla's starting point.

The Roadster then will head back out along the same path, traveling a now-familiar route over and over again for the foreseeable future. But a variety of factors will act to change the trajectory over time.

Analyzing the Roadster's orbit, three astronomers who specialize in planetary motion -- Hanno Rein, Daniel Tamayo and David Vokrouhlicky -- write in a paper posted at arXiv, a repository of electronic preprints of scientific papers hosted by Cornell University, that the Tesla will have its first close encounter with Earth in 2091, possibly passing closer than the moon.

Source :- cbsnews