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I think right now the car is in a low Earth orbit. There will be a second ignition of the top stage later to shift it to the Mars orbit. The timeline ends with…

Mission continues on an experimental long coast and third stage two burn to target a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun

… which I can't completely decode.

Update: SpaceX says "Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars."



The target orbit will be a ellipse around the sun.

The closest point to the sun will be about 1AU (Earth-Sun distance). The furthest point from the sun will be something like 1.5AU (Mars-Sun distance).

This orbit will precess, meaning that it will slowly rotate its axis around the sun, rather than staying locked into the exact same path.


This. AIUI, they didn't bother setting up the "spacecraft" as an actual deep space probe, and it's likely missing electrical power for an extended mission, plus all of the hardware necessary to orient itself, track time and position, perform further burns to insert into Mars orbit, and communicate with Earth about all of that.




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