Elon Musk launched his own Tesla roadster to space four years ago. Where is it now?

Four years ago this week, the most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, made its inaugural launch from Florida and tore into outer space carrying nothing other than Elon Musk's personal Tesla roadster.

The cherry red sports car which is occupied by a spacesuit-clad mannequin nicknamed "Starman" is still out there, taking a lonely, oblong orbital path around the sun, traveling as far away as Mars' orbit and, at other times, as close as Earth's orbit.

As of Monday, the roadster was about 234 million miles from Earth and about 200 million miles from Mars, passing through a no-man's land of outer space, according to the tracking website whereisroadster.com, which uses NASA's data to keep tabs on the car.

Over the past four years, the roadster has traveled nearly 2 billion miles and completed about 2.6 loops around the sun, mostly through a barren, empty vacuum, according to the website.

But it will occasionally get fairly close to other celestial objects. In 2020, the vehicle made its first close approach to Mars, passing within 5 million miles of the planet — or about 20 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

One academic paper estimated that the chances the car collides with the Earth within the next 15 million years at about 22%. The odds of it crashing into Venus or the Sun each stand at 12%.