The SpaceX launch, which suffered several delays prior to its final departure, successfully fired the Falcon Heavy rocket into outer-space.
The Falcon Heavy, which is billed as the most powerful rocket to launch since NASA’s Atlas V, hurtled into outer-space while loaded with a cherry red Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX owner Elon Musk.
The billionaire business magnate sent the electric car into orbit because normal tests are too “boring”.
He said: “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.”
Watch a live webcam stream as the SpaceX Tesla heads to Mars on an epic journey.
Musk uploaded an impressive diagram of the car’s trajectory, showing it missing Mars’ orbit and looping back round towards the inner-solar system before reaching Jupiter.
He tweeted: “Third burn successful. Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt.”
On Wednesday, the US Air Force Space Command announced it had added the Tesla Roadster to the US sate little catalogue.
The SpaceX Tesla won’t come close to Mars for many months, according to Clifford V Johnson, a professor in physics and astronomy at USC.
He said: “Either way, they’ve shown they can get something to Mars or the vicinity of Mars, and that’s great.
“They’ve demonstrated that they can get something that big off the surface of the Earth into Earth orbit, recover most of the vehicle to make the whole thing really cheap.
“And then further extend the payload’s path beyond Earth’s orbit toward Mars.”