Astronomers just deleted an asteroid because it turned out to be Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster
On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth.
But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid.
To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018. The car — which had been owned and driven by Musk — was a test payload for the Falcon Heavy’s first flight. At the time, it received a great deal of notoriety as the first production car to be flung into space, complete with a suited-up mannequin in the driver’s seat named Starman.
The case of mistaken identity was resolved swiftly in a collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers. But some astronomers say it is also emblematic of a growing issue: the lack of transparency from nations and companies operating craft in deep space, beyond the orbits used by most satellites. While objects in lower Earth orbits are tracked by the U.S. Space Force, deeper space remains an unregulated frontier.
