News: Elon Musk's Tesla-Riding Starman Comes to Snapchat via Custom Lens

The Tesla-riding Starman that was launched into space via Elon Musk's SpaceX last week will miss its Mars target and is instead headed toward a lonely asteroid belt in the void of space. But if you missed the initial launch and would like to get a taste of what Starman is seeing, you can now take a short ride along thanks to a new Snapchat Lens.

Created by SVRF, a search engine for augmented reality and virtual reality content, the Starman Lens puts a portal to space anywhere when you open up Snapchat and initialize the Starman Snapcode.

Once launched, you can step through a portal to space and view the Starman in his Tesla floating high above Earth, with the Moon and Mars in the background.

If you haven't been keeping up with your space geek news, Musk has been planning on sending a manned mission to Mars for years now. The first step toward that goal is the testing of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which would serve as the means to get humans to the red planet.

That test went off successfully last week, but Musk decided to add some flair to the test by sending one of his Tesla vehicles (helmed by a mannequin in a space suit) into space, with the goal being to have it orbit Mars until humans get there.

But while the Starman (named after the David Bowie song that's playing in the car) won't reach Mars, the visual managed to capture the imagination of the public, which is important when you're trying to get companies to pay billions to send people and things into space.

Although most of us won't ever travel into space, now, thanks to the magic of augmented reality via Snapchat, we can at least get just a tiny sample of what it might be like. If you want a dose of the real thing, SpaceX has a live video of feed of Starman's initial journey on YouTube.

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