Search icon

News

28th Jan 2025

Newly discovered ‘asteroid’ turns out to be Tesla shot into space by Elon Musk

Zoe Hodges

It is not the first time this has happened

A strange object initially thought to be a newly discovered asteroid has actually turned out to be a Tesla soaring through space.

The ‘asteroid’ was designated 2018 CN41 on January 2 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after its discovery by an amateur astronomer from Turkey.

The object has an orbit that brought it within 150,000 miles of our planet, closer than the moon, meaning that it could be classified as a Near-Earth Object or NEO.

However, hours later, the MPC announced that 2018 CN41 was being removed from their records after they discovered it wasn’t an asteroid as first thought but a car that had been launched into space seven years ago.

“The designation 2018 CN41, announced in MPEC 2025-A38 on Jan 2, 2025 UT, is being deleted,” the MPC said in the retraction notice.

“The next day it was pointed out the orbit matches an artificial object 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla roadster. The designation 2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted.”

Elon Musk and SpaceX made headlines in 2018 when they launched a Tesla Roadster into space as the payload for the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Falcon Heavy needed a test payload, and Musk decided to use his personal 2010 Tesla Roadster. 

The car featured a mannequin at the wheel in a SpaceX spacesuit and was equipped with cameras to provide stunning views of Earth.

The citizen scientist who first discovered the object, who asked to be referred to as “G”, initially submitted his observations to the MPC, but then began to doubt his findings.

G told the publication Astronomy: “I first went to JPL’s Small Body Database to quickly take a look at the Earth close approach dates and potential Mars close approach dates, to see if I could correlate those to a known interplanetary mission. I failed — the Falcon launch had never crossed my mind. I almost concluded it was an actual NEO and stopped looking, but I asked around on the Minor Planet Mailing List just to erase my final doubts.”

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics then began to suspect that the object could be the Falcon upper stage.

It is not the first time a man-made object has been mistaken for an asteroid.

NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) in deep space at the L2 Lagrange point was added to the MPC’s Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page (NEOCP) several times, while the Rosetta spacecraft on its way to land on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko was accidentally designated as the asteroid 2007 VN84.