Elon Musk Unveils 'Starman' in Tesla Roadster Launching on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket

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One day before SpaceX's new Falcon Heavy rocket is slated to blast off on its maiden voyage with a Tesla Roadster on board, Elon Musk has revealed that the electric sports car may have a passenger.

In a series of Instagram photos captioned "Starman in a Red Roadster," Musk debuted a dummy wearing an official SpaceX spacesuit, buckled up and apparently ready to blast off on a mission to Mars.  

With no additional details given, Musk seems to be implying that this "Starman" will travel aboard the Falcon Heavy. The rocket is slated to lift off tomorrow (Feb. 6) at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Visit Space.com for complete coverage of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test flight this week. You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via SpaceX. [In Photos: SpaceX's 1st Falcon Heavy Rocket Readies for Launch]

Musk announced in December that the Tesla Roadster will head to Mars, playing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on full blast the whole way there. Keeping with the Bowie-inspired theme to this mission, Musk nicknamed the dummy "Starman" after Bowie's 1972 hit.

Visit Space.com for complete coverage of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test flight this week.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.