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How a Mars “spy satellite” engineer tracked Musk’s Tesla Roadster

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Elderberry:
Inverse by Mike Brown 7/15/2021

SpaceX: How a Mars “spy satellite” engineer tracked Musk’s Tesla Roadster

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster has been on an impressive journey around the Solar System — and a Mars “spy satellite” engineer has helped track its journey.

Ben Pearson is a 36-year-old Huntsville, Alabama-based aerospace engineer. He’s also the creator of the Where is Roadster website. The website has tracked Musk’s Roadster ever since it launched on the first flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on February 8, 2018.

Pearson has experience with groundbreaking objects in space. While at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Pearson got the chance to work on the High Resolution Imaging Experiment, also known as HIRISE. This 143-pound camera was launched on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005, where it studies the planet’s atmosphere.

“It’s essentially a spy satellite for Mars,” Pearson tells Inverse.

Pearson was quoted in a local Tucson news website in 2006 after the first high-resolution images were beamed back to Earth. Pearson described the image quality at the time as “incredible [...] we knew somewhere in our minds that this was what it was capable of. But, when you actually see it …"

SpaceX’s February 2018 launch stunned spaceflight fans. In the test payload was Musk’s personal red Tesla Roadster, kitted out with a series of extras:

•   A dummy wearing a SpaceX spacesuit, dubbed “Starman.”

•   A reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the words “don’t panic” emblazoned on the dashboard.

•   A “5D quartz laser storage device” containing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books.

More: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-how-a-mars-spy-satellite-engineer-tracked-musks-tesla-roadster

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