looks like it's been pulled, even in the U.S.
Btw, any chance SpaceX could launch a small spacecraft that could catch up to Starman & take some pics? Would be super interesting to see what Roadster & its passenger look like these days
In a few years
I just looked in on StarMan who is as you may recall out driving his Roadster. Looking at the animation of his drive on Heavens Above it appears as if he’ll be driving very near Mars, close enough that I think it bears looking at. I'd guess its a 1 in 100 orbits closeness. Granted the view is from about ½ billion miles away and the time increments look to be about 2 weeks but given those qualifiers there is going to be a visual conjunction between them. The closest time increment that I can get it to settle on is September 28th, 2020, which is pictured but you can see it’ll get much closer in the days after.Update (Duh) As I'm composing this post to essentially ask if there's someone that can calculate the closest approach distance I adjusted the date in the Heavens Above visualizer to the closest date it'll give me and captured that image. And I see at the top of that frame and the next one they have calculated and posted the closest approach distance. Anyways, still interestingHeavens Above: https://www.heavens-above.com/Tesla.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT (scroll slider to near the end)Rougher visualization: https://www.whereisroadster.com/
Starman, last seen leaving Earth, made its first close approach with Mars today—within 0.05 astronomical units, or under 5 million miles, of the Red Planet