Distance from Earth
—Waiting for ephemeris…
Loading the Roadster’s predicted location…
Where is Starman? Track the
Tesla Roadster in Space!
On February 6, 2018, Falcon Heavy carried a Tesla Roadster and its passenger, Starman, into space. Their journey around the Sun continues.
The launch that started it all
FEBRUARY 6, 2018Starts at T−00:10 and autoplays muted when in view. Turn on sound in the player.
Watch on YouTube ↗The Solar System
NOWStarman’s predicted position among the inner planets.
MercuryVenusEarthMarsRoadsterSun
Sun-centered view · markers enlarged for visibility
Open the full orbit explorer →Distance from Mars
—Waiting for ephemeris…
Distance from the Sun
—Waiting for ephemeris…
These are orbit predictions, not a live signal or camera feed. Dates beyond the available ephemeris are explicitly unavailable.
Where is Starman going?
Explore the Roadster’s predicted journey through the inner Solar System.
Axes in millions of miles (M mi). Planet and car markers are enlarged. Curves show approximately one orbit around the selected date. The side view exaggerates height by 6×.
How far away is Starman?
Predicted distance from Earth, Mars, and the Sun over a chosen period.
EarthMarsSun
Close approaches
Nominal encounters published with NASA/JPL Roadster solution #11. These are predictions with growing uncertainty.
| Nominal date (TDB) | Body | Distance | 3σ distance range | Relative speed | Explore |
|---|
TDB is a dynamical time scale, about 69 seconds ahead of UTC at present. “Explore” uses an approximate UTC equivalent. The uncertainty interval does not include every possible unmodeled force. No listed encounter is a predicted impact.
Starman in the sky
Geometric direction from the center of Earth, using the date selected below.
Right ascension (J2000)
—Declination (J2000)
—One-way light time
—This is a geometric geocentric direction. It does not include light-time correction, stellar aberration, atmospheric refraction, or your local horizon. It is an educational orientation, not a telescope pointing solution or a visibility forecast.
A long journey ahead
The current JPL trajectory ends at the start of 2090. This copy carries a saved dataset covering , and checks JPL directly for updated predictions while you visit.
Planetary gravity changes the Roadster’s orbit over time. Close encounters make distant forecasts increasingly uncertain. A static two-body orbit cannot reproduce that behavior, so this tracker uses JPL’s numerical trajectory instead.
When the data ends, the tracker displays “unavailable.” It does not continue an old ellipse indefinitely or silently freeze the car at the final known point.
Explore the available future →What keeps this copy working?
- The current date drives the display automatically.
- Its server requests NASA/JPL directly, without using the original website.
- A saved multi-decade dataset remains available during JPL outages.
- The downloadable standalone copy includes its data and photograph.
- A documented refresh command can rebuild the fallback if JPL publishes a new solution.
The launch
Falcon Heavy’s demonstration flight lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on February 6, 2018 at 20:45 UTC. The payload was a Tesla Roadster with a mannequin in a spacesuit, nicknamed Starman.
After an initial period in Earth orbit, the upper stage sent the payload into a heliocentric orbit. The vehicle now travels around the Sun, crossing the range of distances occupied by Earth and Mars.
Watch SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy test flight ↗Frequently asked questions
Is this live tracking?
The clock is live, but the positions are predicted from NASA/JPL Horizons state vectors. The Roadster is not transmitting telemetry to this website.
Will this work if whereisroadster.com goes offline?
Yes. The tracker’s data, layout, and photograph are served by this copy. New ephemerides are requested from JPL directly. The standalone HTML also works from its saved dataset without a network connection.
How accurate are the numbers?
Positions use cubic Hermite interpolation of JPL position and velocity vectors. The saved fallback has two-day samples; refreshed data has daily samples. Numerical interpolation error is separate from, and usually much smaller than, uncertainty in the Roadster’s actual trajectory. This is an educational tracker.
Why are the relative speed and orbital speed different?
“Toward” and “away” measure the change in distance along the line between two objects. Orbital speed is the Roadster’s full velocity relative to the Sun. Earth and Mars move too.
Can I see a current picture?
The photograph is from launch day. There is no live camera feed in this copy. The orbit plots are simulations using predicted positions.
What happens after 2089?
The current JPL solution does not supply a trajectory beyond the start of 2090. A future solution may extend it, but no extension is promised. This copy refuses to extrapolate beyond its valid samples.
What do the fun counters mean?
Music counters divide elapsed time since launch by assumed track lengths (5:15 and 3:55). The approximate orbit count uses a fixed 557-day reference period. Distance traveled integrates heliocentric speed from the first saved sample, February 8, 2018. These are illustrative counters, not operational measurements.
About this tracker
An independent recreation of the Starman tracking experience, inspired by Where is Roadster, created by Ben Pearson / Old Ham Media. This copy is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with that site, SpaceX, Tesla, NASA, or JPL.
Data provenance
- Source
- NASA/JPL Horizons · target −143205
- Saved solution
- —
- Saved dataset retrieved
- —
- Saved coverage
- —
- Coordinates
- Heliocentric geometric J2000 ecliptic. Distances and CSV positions are shown in miles; speeds and CSV velocities are shown in mph. Source vectors retain JPL’s native coordinates. Input and output times are UT.
- Refresh behavior
- Checks on page load using the selected year; successful responses are cached for up to 24 hours. The saved dataset is used if JPL is unavailable. No scheduled job or subscription is needed for the ticking position display.
- Photograph
- SpaceX, February 2018. Saved locally so the page does not depend on the original site.
What this recreation includes
Current distances and speeds, elapsed-time counters, an interactive orbit simulation, distance plots and CSV exports, JPL close approaches, and a geometric sky direction. Other-mission links open official mission pages. The original’s shopping, donation, translations, and mission-planning systems are not reproduced.
Future reliability depends on continued hosting and the availability of JPL’s trajectory. The saved data protects against outages and the loss of the original website, but it cannot supply new observations or guarantee a scientifically accurate position indefinitely.