The first Roadster needed a rocket to fly. The new one does it on its own.
The first Tesla Roadster to leave the ground needed the most powerful rocket flying at the time. In 2018, SpaceX strapped Elon Musk's own cherry-red Roadster to a Falcon Heavy and sent it past the orbit of Mars, where it is still circling the Sun. Eight years later, the new Roadster left the ground on its own, using air thrusters built with SpaceX's help. Same name, same spirit, no rocket required.
2018: the Roadster that rode a rocket
Every new rocket needs something to carry on its first flight. Usually it's a block of concrete or steel. In March 2017, Musk promised the first Falcon Heavy would carry "the silliest thing we can imagine" (Wikipedia).
In December he named it: "Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent" (Electrek). Plenty of people assumed he was joking. He wasn't.
The car was Musk's own 2010 Roadster, the model Tesla started out with (Wikipedia, Hagerty). On February 6, 2018, at 3:45 pm Eastern, the Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, the same pad Apollo 11 left from (Wikipedia). About eight minutes later, its two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral, side by side (The Planetary Society).
Musk summed it up after launch: "It is just literally a normal car, in space" (collectSPACE).
What went along for the ride
SpaceX packed the car with jokes and messages (collectSPACE, Wikipedia):
- Starman, a mannequin in a SpaceX pressure suit, named after the David Bowie song, with one hand on the wheel.
- "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, playing on a loop.
- "DON'T PANIC" on the dashboard screen, the famous line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A copy of the book and a towel came too.
- A tiny Hot Wheels Roadster on the dashboard, with a tiny Starman inside.
- A plaque with the names of more than 6,000 SpaceX employees.
- "Made on Earth by humans," printed on one of the car's circuit boards.
- A small quartz disc holding Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, made to last billions of years (SpaceQ).
Where it is right now
The car never went into orbit around Mars. It circles the Sun on a stretched loop that reaches just past Mars' orbit and swings back in to about Earth's distance. One lap takes about 557 days (Wikipedia, NASA/JPL). On October 7, 2020, it passed Mars at about 5 million miles (Live Science).
As of October 16, 2026, according to the live tracker at whereisroadster.com, checked against NASA/JPL data:
| Distance from Earth | about 61.5 million miles, moving away |
| Distance from the Sun | about 139 million miles |
| Speed around the Sun | about 50,700 mph |
| Laps around the Sun | about 5.7 |
| Total distance traveled | about 4.31 billion miles |
| Its 36,000-mile warranty | used up about 119,600 times |
Its next closest pass to the Sun is around April 2027 (NASA/JPL).
