In a peculiar astronomical mix-up, a mysterious object once feared to be a near-Earth asteroid has turned out to be Elon Musk’s cherry-red Tesla Roadster, which SpaceX launched into space in 2018. The object, initially classified as asteroid 2018 CN41, was spotted by an amateur astronomer earlier this month, sparking concerns due to its close approach of less than 240,000 km from Earth—closer than the Moon’s orbit.
The Minor Planet Center (MPC), responsible for tracking asteroids, quickly retracted the classification after determining the object to be the Tesla Roadster. The car, launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, has been orbiting the Sun with its mannequin driver, “Starman,” since 2018.
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“The orbit matches an artificial object, the Falcon Heavy upper stage with the Tesla Roadster,” the MPC confirmed in a notice. The designation for the asteroid was subsequently deleted and labeled as an omitted entry.
The amateur astronomer, known as “G” from Turkey, initially believed he had identified a potentially hazardous near-Earth object. However, after reanalyzing its trajectory, he began to suspect that the object wasn’t an asteroid at all. The confirmation came when astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell from Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics identified the object as Musk’s spacefaring car.
The bizarre misidentification highlights the challenges of tracking artificial objects in space, as not all close encounters involve natural celestial bodies. In this case, a cosmic joyride nearly passed as a potential threat to Earth.
