The cherry-red Tesla Roadster was the payload for the test launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. Tesla SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's personal vehicle played David Bowie's 1969 classic Space Oddity as the rocket blasted off. It was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The United States' Apollo 11 mission launched five days later becoming the first manned moon landing five days after that - July 20, 1969 - 50 years ago last month. The soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey incorporates classical music including Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. Zarathustra was Zoroaster or Z driving and guiding the journey.

Five years ago yesterday, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a Tesla into space, in a stunt that even the most hardened Musk haters would grudgingly admit is pretty cool.

The Roadster has since been on one hell of a journey, driving away from Earth at the impressive speed of 26,619 kilometers per hour (16,540 miles per hour), with an arguably more impressive fuel efficiency of 8,511.4 kilometers per liter (20,020 miles per gallon). Since its launch on February 6, 2018, the car has orbited the Sun 3.3 times according to tracker Where Is Starman, rolling as it goes.

The Roadster, assuming it isn't eroded by radiation or unlucky enough to get into the solar system's first space car crash (say with a meteorite), will continue in its orbit for a long time, crossing the orbit of Mars and Earth as it does so. Though the car has not been tracked closely, in 2018 a paper did look at its orbit in an attempt to work out its fate. According to the paper, published in the journal Aerospace, the car will make a close approach to Earth in the next 100 years, coming closer to Earth than the Moon orbits.