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SpaceX: Tesla Starman 'completes solar orbit'

Media caption,

Space X's Starman heads into space

The sports car sent into space by rocket company SpaceX has made a lap around the Sun.

In February 2018, the world's most powerful rocket took off with a sports car attached to the top.

The car was an electric Roadster made by Tesla - that's the company owned by South African Billionaire Elon Musk, who also owns SpaceX.

Inside the car was a mannequin dressed in a space suit. He became known as Starman!

Image source, Space X/AFP

Now according to people tracking the car, it's completed its first solar orbit.

Experts worked out that it would take the car 557 Earth days to make the solar lap and it's now been in space for over 560.

But you won't see anything red and shiny by looking up into the night sky!

Starman is now on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, and is moving at about 24,000 miles an hour.

Image source, Getty Images

Mr Musk sent the car into space as part of an experiment as he was launching his Falcon Heavy reusable rocket.

He wanted to show that it could carry something as heavy as a car out of the Earth's atmosphere.

"It's kind of silly and fun.... but silly and fun things are important."

— Elan Musk, Space X boss

Mr Musk says the car could be up there for millions of years.

Although it looks amazing, some people worried that all this achieved was to add to the growing problem of space junk - that's all the bits of metal from space exploration and satellite launches that are abandoned in space and which could cause problems later on.

Image source, Space X/AFP

However others, like space junk expert Darren McKnight, say that most of it is in orbit around the Earth and as the Roadster will orbit the Sun, it won't add to the thousands of pieces of metal circling our planet.

He added: "The enthusiasm and interest that [Elon Musk] generates more than offsets the infinitesimally small 'littering' of the cosmos."