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06th Feb 2018

A car blaring David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ is being shot into space today

Kate Demolder

A dummy, named Starman, will be the car’s only passenger.

A car blaring David Bowie will be flown into Space later today, 6 February.

US entrepreneur and product architect of Tesla, Elon Musk, is behind the launch and has decided his cherry-red Tesla is the only car for the job.

Musk has plans to blast David Bowie’s Space Oddity on repeat as the car ascends into the Great Unknown, but there will no human on board to hear it. Due to the risk of the launch, a dummy, aptly named Starman, will be riding shotgun.

Clip via SpaceX

The car has been fixed on to the Falcon Heavy, a rocket designed to have twice the launching power of any other spacecraft. The launch will occur at 6.30pm GMT.

It’s understood that almost half a million people are expected to travel to Florida’s Space Coast to watch the Falcon Heavy take-off. Three cameras have been attached to the vehicle to provide video footage of the car ascending into space.

Elon Musk expects it will “be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent”.

Musk told reporters: “The weather’s looking good, the rocket’s looking good. It’s going to be exciting one way or the other, it’s either going to be an exciting test or an exciting failure.”

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