ELON Musk is going to blast his original Tesla sports car into SPACE on a megarocket – and it will remain in orbit around Mars for a BILLION years.
The tech billionaire is putting a cherry red Tesla Roadster in the Falcon Heavy rocket and sending it to Mars.
The rocket is due to launch next month in Cape Canaveral from the same launch pad as the Saturn V Apollo 11.
Fittingly, the car will be playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity on repeat as it makes its way to the Red Planet.
When someone asked the businessman why he was doing this, Mr Musk replied: “I love the thought of a car drifting trough pace and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future.”
Although Musk had said he had made the idea up after posting it on Twitter, he seems to be following through with his whacky idea.
Speaking to Verge, he said: "Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks.
“That seemed extremely boring. So we decided to send something unusual.”
After his tweet, he later back-pedalled on this statement by saying that he was not sure if SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket craft would carry the electric vehicle to the Red Planet.
But now the South African born American has now left no doubt in anyone’s mind that SpaceX will be sending a car to Mars after he posted a series of pictures on Instagram of the red Tesla Roadster inside the Falcon Heavy.
Final confirmation came from a sneaky photo taken by a tourist at the Kennedy Space Centre a few days ago.
Twitter user Emiliano C. Diaz de Leon was on a tour bus at the NASA space centre when me managed to get a photo of the Falcon Heavy payload being moved inside a shed.
The car will also have a copy of 'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' in the glove box, and a towel and a sign saying “Don’t Panic”
The Falcon Heavy is a soup-up version of the Falcon 9 rocket booster which is used to bring supplies to the International Space Station. The Heavy is the equivalent of three Falcon 9s.
The journey will be SpaceX’s first unmanned flight to Mars.
Despite the high hopes, Mr Musk has caution that the launch could end in disaster.
He said: “There’s a real chance the vehicle won’t make it to orbit.
“I hope it makes it far enough away that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win.”