C<\/span>ape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) –<\/strong> The world\u2019s first space sports car is cruising toward the asteroid belt, well beyond Mars.<\/p>\n

SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed the new, more distant route for his rocketing Tesla Roadster. The red electric convertible was the unorthodox cargo aboard his company\u2019s brand new Falcon Heavy rocket during a test flight on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

With the successful launch, the Heavy became the most powerful rocket flying today.<\/p>\n

And Musk\u2019s Roadster became the fastest car ever, hurtling off the planet and zooming away on a route that will now take it all the way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Late Tuesday, Musk said the final firing of the rocket\u2019s upper stage put his car on a more distant trajectory than anticipated. Not only is it headed toward Mars, but almost to the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt.<\/p>\n

A mannequin dressed in a \u201creal deal\u201d SpaceX spacesuit \u2014 dubbed \u201cStarman\u201d by Musk \u2014 is strapped in behind the car\u2019s wheel.<\/p>\n

Usually, test flights carry nothing of value, like concrete blocks. Musk found that \u201cboring\u201d and put his cherry-red Tesla on top. He\u2019s in charge of the carmaker as well as the private space company.<\/p>\n

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he\u2019s incredibly proud after SpaceX\u2019s big new rocket carried a red electric sports car into orbit on Tuesday. Two booster rockets landed together. The rocket\u2019s center core slammed into the Atlantic at 300 mph. (Feb. 7)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Images<\/a>\u00a0of the exposed Roadster and \u201cStarman\u201d \u2014 named after a David Bowie song \u2014 against the backdrop of our blue planet, were burning up the internet long after Tuesday\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it looks so ridiculous and impossible. You can tell it\u2019s real because it looks so fake, honestly,\u201d Musk said Tuesday night. \u201cIt\u2019s still tripping me out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Roadster is in an even more elongated orbit now that stretches from Earth on one end, all the way to the neighborhood of Ceres on the other. The original plan had the car traveling only as far as Mars, coming close to the red planet but hopefully not nicking it. If it survives the swarming asteroid belt, the car and its occupant are expected to continue orbiting for millions if not billions of years.<\/p>\n

Like so many others, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold was awe-struck by the live streaming of \u201cStarman\u201d and his ride. Arnold is preparing for his own ride to the International Space Station next month.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerfect day for a cruise in a ragtop,\u201d Arnold tweeted, offering congratulations to SpaceX. \u201cAwesome! At this speed, two hands on the steering wheel please #Starman.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step onto the moon, also celebrated after watching the rocket soar \u201cfrom my favorite launch pad.\u201d The Heavy lifted off from the same spot as NASA\u2019s now-retired but more powerful Saturn V moon rockets and space shuttles. The Heavy is a combo of three Falcon 9s, that SpaceX uses to ship space station supplies and launch satellites for its customers.<\/p>\n

Mars is driving all of Musk\u2019s space efforts.<\/p>\n

Musk said he doesn\u2019t plan to fly people on the Heavy \u2014 that will mainly be used to launch supersize satellites. But he\u2019s accelerating development of an even bigger rocket for deep-space crews \u2014 \u201ca beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

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His overriding goal is to establish a city on Mars, sending people there in a flotilla of SpaceX spaceships launched by colossal SpaceX rockets. Before dashing off to the red planet, Musk said he\u2019d want to try out this spaceship in orbit around Earth \u2014 possibly in three to four years with the supersize rocket \u2014 and then the moon.<\/p>\n

At a news conference Tuesday night, Musk told reporters that as early as next year, he may begin test flights of the mega spaceship in Texas. These short hops would take the ship several miles high and then come back down for a landing. It\u2019s the landing part that\u2019s especially hard, he noted, especially at the speed, the craft will be traveling when it comes in for a touchdown on another planet.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s success of the Heavy provides a confidence boost to these future plans, Musk said. Two of the three first-stage boosters flew back for side-by-side landings; the third was lost at sea.<\/p>\n

Rocket recycling is the key to SpaceX\u2019s launch cost-cutting strategy. The Falcon Heavy is price-listed at $90 million, a bargain in the business of rockets.<\/p>\n

The president of the Mars Society, a space advocacy group intent on exploring and settling Mars, cheered SpaceX\u2019s achievement \u2014 and reduced price. \u201cThis is a revolution,\u201d Robert Zubrin said in a statement. \u201cThe naysayers have been completely refuted.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, with the Heavy demo out of the way, Musk said SpaceX is putting its commercial crew effort for NASA front and center. He said the company is still on track to launch astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, at the end of this year.<\/p>\n

SpaceX<\/a>\u00a0is competing with Boeing to be the first to send Americans into orbit from U.S. soil again, something that hasn\u2019t happened since NASA\u2019s last shuttle flight. U.S. astronauts have been riding Russian rockets, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a seat, to get to the space station since the shuttle program ended in 2011.<\/p>\n

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Musk noted that SpaceX used only internal funds to finance the Heavy. He\u2019s hoping that will encourage other companies and countries \u201cto raise their sights and say, hey, we can do bigger and better, which is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want a new space race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – The world\u2019s first space sports car is cruising toward the asteroid belt, well beyond Mars. SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed the new, more distant route for his rocketing Tesla Roadster. The red electric convertible was the unorthodox cargo aboard his company\u2019s brand new Falcon Heavy rocket during a test flight…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,47,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9775"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9775"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9783,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9775\/revisions\/9783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}