Next month Elon Musk will send a Tesla Roadster to Mars

Next month, SpaceX plans to perform the first test flight of Falcon Heavy. This is a new super heavy-lift launch vehicle that consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 core plus two additional Falcon 9 first stages.

Just like the Falcon 9, this rocket will be reusable. After stage separation, the three individual boosters will perform a reentry burn and will attempt to land on a ground-based or sea-based landing platform. It is not the most powerful rocket in history, but if it works, it will be the most powerful rocket currently in operation.

SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk wasn't joking when he said the payload of the Falcon Heavy maiden flight will be his midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing David Bowie's Space Oddity.

New photos on Musk's Instagram account reveal the company has indeed mounted an original Tesla Roadster on a platform. The photos proovide a detailed look at this exclusive payload. They also provide a scale versus the overall size of the payload fairing.

Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring. Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit. - Elon Musk

Musk says the goal is to get the Roadster into an elliptic Mars orbit, where it will be for a billion years or so if the launch is successful. The choice of payload is definitely interesting. Instead of a boring payload like concrete blocks, Musk picked something that will speak to the imagination of a lot of space and EV enthusiasts. A successful launch will be a major PR victory for the company and it will prime people to the idea that private space companies can and will eventually take humans beyond low-Earth orbit.