02-08-2018, 01:53 PM
"The car will still head out to Mars, but is no expected to travel even farther (intentionally? unintentionally?)"
My understanding is that they just burned the second stage as long as they could to demonstrate it could be restarted after being turned off in low earth orbit. In addition, it showed that it would be capable of taking a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (without a satellite having to do it itself). I think they originally estimated this would put it into a solar orbit that extended out to the distance of Mars but it actually went on a little longer and sent it into an even larger orbit.
My understanding is that they just burned the second stage as long as they could to demonstrate it could be restarted after being turned off in low earth orbit. In addition, it showed that it would be capable of taking a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (without a satellite having to do it itself). I think they originally estimated this would put it into a solar orbit that extended out to the distance of Mars but it actually went on a little longer and sent it into an even larger orbit.