TESLA ROADSTER ABOARD ROCKET HEADED FOR MARS

SpaceX has revealed pictures of a Tesla Roadster sports car mounted inside the nose cone that will launch atop the Falcon Heavy — the world’s new most powerful rocket — as soon as next month. “Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks,” Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said Friday on Instagram. “That seemed extremely boring. ... We decided to send something unusual.” Musk says the midnight cherry red Roadster (his own, according to previous posts) is bound for the Red Planet “on a billion-year elliptic Mars orbit.”