Oddity

Tesla Roadster (Starman)

A cherry-red sports car with a dummy at the wheel, launched on the first Falcon Heavy and now looping round the Sun between Earth and Mars.

Often said

• It is heading for the asteroid belt — its furthest point from the Sun is 1.66 au and the belt starts near 2.1 au. It does cross Mars's orbit, but it will never meet the planet.
  CNBC and Space.com, 8 February 2018, correcting the launch-day statement
• It is tracked — nobody has observed it since March 2018. Everything shown here is a calculation from elements fitted to 374 old photographs.
  JPL Horizons object header for -143205

How the map draws it

Drawn from published dimensions for the first-generation Tesla Roadster · nobody knows which way it points, so it is drawn level; the red is ours and the sign on the dash is blank, because neither is published.