Re: It was never going anywhere NEAR Mars
According to https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/02/08/starman-puts-earth-in-the-rearview-mirror/, it's orbit is pretty much as originally planned. It will miss Mars by about 69 million miles (which is 2/3rds of the Earth-Sun distance, so a long way). Furthest distance from Sun will be 158 million miles. That's far short of Ceres (250 million miles), but relatively close to the inner asteroid belt (180 million miles).
It's not going to hit Mars any time in the next few thousand years. By the time it does, we'll be living there and will have contaminated it thoroughly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
