Don't Panic - Falcon Heavy Testflight >=2/3 successful

[Proteus_MST]

I guess the manichin "driving" tge car won't last much more than a year. Radiation and space dust are going to do him in.

Well, we'll never find out.
The battery powering his camera went out of power after 12 hours.
Elon Musk linked his last pic in a Tweet:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/961359174230773765

According to this obital simulator:
http://orbitsimulator.com/gravitySim...bitViewer.html
(if Starman isn't imported yet, import object -143205)

It seems like the closest approach to earth (i.e. where Starman is around his Perihelion and the position of earth is roughly at he same place) will be in around 3 years (i.e. in February 2021).
And his distance from earth at this time will be more than 50% the distance between Venus and Earth during heir closest approaches ... surely too far for even larger earthbound telescopes to make out tiny details (like the manichin).

And it seems like he will never come this close to earth again in th foreseeable future (meaning the time that I looked, = till 2040)
(although the orbital simulation surely is just a rough estimate, assuming a stable orbit and not taking into account any changes to Starmans orbit caused by him coming into proximity of Mars)

[Lorizael]

There is apparently going to be a very close approach (~1.6 times farther than the moon) in 2073 which, if it were bigger, would kinda maybe technically make it a "potentially hazardous asteroid."

[Aeson]

Well if we can't clutter it up with debris for marketing/ego massage purposes, what good is space anyway?