Tesla's sports car may not end up as happy as expected after entering space

According to foreign media reports, the Falcon Heavy rocket was successfully launched not long ago, and the Tesla sports car carrying the rocket has now entered the solar system. In the worst case scenario, what kind of damage will the unusual celestial body cause to the Tesla sports car?

In the early morning of February 7th, Beijing time, the Falcon Heavy rocket was launched from the ground, carrying something into the solar system - a red Tesla sports car with a mannequin in a space suit strapped to the driver's seat.

There are many questions here, including: Why is the car traveling through space when it's not being driven? Why does the mannequin need to wear a space suit? What on earth is Elon Musk thinking?

But the question will eventually come down to: What exactly will happen to the Tesla Roadster once it enters space? It's hard to find answers to most of these questions, but the last one - or at least the potential outcomes - is what will happen to Musk's Tesla Roadster and what it will collide with during its space travel. Here's what scientists assume will happen to the Tesla Roadster in the worst-case scenario.

Hypothesis 1: Space radiation will tear the Tesla Roadster apart

The space sports car may be floating, but it's not exactly at peace, as it's being bombarded with extremely high doses of stellar radiation that will eventually destroy any organic parts of the car's structure, as well as the plastic structures in the sports car, as well as the windshield and carbon fiber structure inside the car.

William Carroll, a chemist and plastic/organic molecule expert at Indiana University in the United States, said that space radiation will randomly destroy the chemical bonds within the molecules themselves, causing any organic matter to break apart and diffuse into other molecules very quickly.

"Organic materials in space won't stay intact for a year," Carroll said. Scientifically, it doesn't matter. It's not like the SpaceSports is useful for exploration missions. A mannequin in the driver's seat wouldn't be worse than floating in space. The SpaceSports doesn't look that good after being warped in space, unless you're not looking closely. According to Musk, the car is "dead."

Hypothesis 2: Asteroid + car = car turns into pieces

A SpaceX research report stated that initially the space sports car was heading towards the orbit of Mars, but it is not currently flying in that direction. Due to the unexpectedly strong thrust of the Falcon Heavy rocket, the space sports car is now flying towards the asteroid belt, or close to the asteroid belt area.

As the name implies, the asteroid belt is a densely packed rocky area. But this was not the expected result. The space sports car ended up colliding between the rocky bodies. As Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said, whenever you see the asteroid belt in a movie, you think of "Star Wars." They are so dense that it seems like they are only 3 meters apart. This is not the case. If you are on an asteroid, the closest asteroid may look like a distant star. This is because space is an empty area.

So the chances of the space car colliding with an asteroid powerful enough to destroy it are low, but not impossible. In the unlikely event that the space car breaks into numerous pieces, it will contribute to the growing problem of space debris. Space junk could pose a deadly hazard to future space missions, or a collision could send pieces of the car into orbit around Mars or other planets.

Hypothesis 3: The car is pulled into the orbit of Mars by gravity, which may damage the satellite

Currently, humans have deployed six artificial satellites in the orbit of Mars. Recently, images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have helped scientists identify six large ice structures exposed on the surface of Mars. This information is crucial for future human exploration and can solve the problem of drinking water for humans on the surface of Mars in the future.

McDowell tweeted that based on the current trajectory, the space sports car should reach its closest point to Mars in October 2020. This will be only 4.3 million miles from Mars, which is very close in space, but it will still be some distance away from Mars, so we don't have to worry about the space car colliding with the surface of Mars (it may also be gradually approaching Mars due to gravity in the next few hundred years, but it will not collide with the surface of Mars soon).

However, the space sports car was hit by space debris, and the fragments of the sports car after the collision may enter the Martian atmosphere and pose a threat to artificial satellites orbiting Mars.

As for how scientists could use these satellites to study Mars (or plan a space mission) to analyze the potential threat posed by space sports cars to Mars, the ultimate answer you're looking for is "probably not good," but since space debris probably won't reach Mars in the near future, it could potentially be a threat to any humans orbiting Mars. What if humans live on the surface of Mars in the future? Pieces of human sports cars from centuries ago falling to the surface of the Earth could very well damage the satellites they use to communicate with Earth. If you think drivers driving fast are annoying now, you can imagine what it would be like if a lot of sports car debris fell from the sky.

Hypothesis 4: The space sports car crashes on the surface of Mars, contaminating the surface microorganisms of Mars

This is the worst-case scenario for Musk's space sports car. If the space sports car is not exposed to space radiation, does not collide with an asteroid, orbital material or artificial satellite, it may actually crash on the surface of Mars or some other celestial body in the solar system. These debris may bring potential Earth microorganisms to Mars, eliminating any possible "original ecological environment" on Mars. This sounds a bit far-fetched, but it doesn't mean it won't happen.

Ancient Mars may have had conditions for life to survive, but the probability of them surviving to this day is very low. Earth microorganisms that can survive the cold, windless conditions of space have enough tenacity to adapt to the Martian environment and gradually kill potential "original life". Or because of their arrival, future human research on Mars may not be able to distinguish between Martian life and Earth life. If this space sports car arrives on a planet with potential life forms such as Europa or Enceladus, a similar situation may occur.

This catastrophic scenario is also the least likely to happen, given the fact that the space car is so far away from any other planet that it would require unusual circumstances for this to happen. First, something would have to change the car's trajectory again - a collision with a larger object, or the gravitational pull of another planet or the sun, gradually changing its orbit (which The Atlantic reports could take hundreds of years). This change in orbit would bring the car very close to the planet, affected by the strong gravity of the planet. Eventually, any debris from the car would pass through the planet's atmosphere without completely burning up, which is difficult for the spacecraft we design to achieve.

But this is space, and a lot of unexpected things can happen in very special environments (such as the fact that we exist), so you never know. The current space sports car is 58,000 kilometers from Earth and 238 million kilometers from Mars, which means we need a lot of time to monitor this space traveler and prepare for its potential impact (or inevitable death) before Musk's sports car becomes a pile of parts between galaxies.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.