AND BEYOND!
.....................................................................................................................................................................
Starman is going to the Asteroid Belt.
Almost to the orbit of Ceres
- the second stage of the rocket, which spent five hours parked in the Van Allen Belt before it restarted its Merlin engine for the third time to escape Earth's gravity. The Van Allen Belts are regions of intense radiation created by cosmic ray particles captured by the Earth's magnetic field. They act as a protective shield for the planet, but they can be a hazard for spacecraft that do not make a quick transition of the belts.
.
In this case, the second stage was not adversely affected, and fired as scheduled. It expended its propellant entirely, causing it to not only reach escape velocity, but also to reach an orbit that will circle the Sun at a distance between 91 million mi (150 million km) and 240 million mi (390 million km) – well into the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and almost as far out as the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres.
That's what free enterprise can do. In other news...I recently ordered a cane. It was supposedly delivered today.... we got an email saying that it was. I checked at the door and called the front office. Nope..no package for me.
It was sent US Postal Service..
The USPS had ONE job.....Does anything more need to be said?