In 2018, a cherry-red Tesla Roadster was flung into the solar system aboard a SpaceX rocket — less a spacecraft than a symbol of human audacity dressed in automotive chrome. Eight years on, a software engineer named Ben Pearson has made it his quiet mission to track the vehicle's wandering path, reassuring a curious public that the 22 percent chance of Earth collision over the next million years carries no real danger, only the slow poetry of orbital mechanics playing out across deep time. The Roadster is not a threat; it is a mirror — reflecting back our fascination with what we launch into t