Just How Close Did Starman Get to Mars?

On October 7, 2020, SpaceX sent out a tweet that Starman made its closest approach to Mars at 0.05 AU. Back in February 2018, SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy for the first time. As a test payload, they brought along a Tesla Roadster with a dummy astronaut, "Starman". Well, we saw this and thought, 'Exactly how close is that? How big would Mars look?' So, we answered that! Watch the video to see exactly what Starman would have seen out its window.

We know that Starman passed within 8.7 million km to Mars in this approach and that Mars’s diameter is 6,779 km. So by dividing the diameter by the distance, we get 0.00078 radians. Well, to make it simpler to compare to other objects, we converted that into arcseconds. One radian = 3600(arcseconds in one degree) x 180/π = 206265. So we just take our number and multiply it by 206265 to get 161 arcseconds, or 2.7 arc minutes. For comparison, the full moon is usually about 31 arc minutes. For more information on angular measurement, check out the great video at the end of this one.

Don't forget that the Mars Society's 23rd Annual International Convention starts this Thursday going from 15-18 October. It's all completely free and completely online. For more information and to register, go here: https://www.marssociety.org/conventions/2020/

Music:
Monma - Calm Lands: https://soundcloud.com/chilledcow/monma-calm-lands

Видео Just How Close Did Starman Get to Mars? канала MarsTalk