Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
A newly discovered "asteroid" was hailed as a near-Earth object—until astronomers realized it was actually Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, launched into space in 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
The cherry-red Tesla, carrying "Starman" in a likely defective spacesuit, was meant to orbit Mars but instead entered a stable orbit around the Sun. It has since traveled over 4.5 times around our star at speeds of 45,000 mph.
An amateur astronomer in Turkey mistakenly classified the car as asteroid 2018 CN41. Within 17 hours, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center retracted the finding, admitting it was a man-made object.
According to Astronomy.com, the Tesla has long exceeded its original 36,000-mile warranty—by roughly 100,000 times. After years of radiation exposure and micrometeorite impacts, it is likely stripped, corroded, and unrecognizable.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, warned that space debris confusion will only increase as more human-made objects escape Earth’s gravity.
McDowell further cautioned that “worst case, you spend a billion [dollars] launching a space probe to study an asteroid and only realize it’s not an asteroid when you get there.”
The Tesla isn't alone—past mistakes have included NASA’s Lucy probe, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, and rocket boosters. Each was temporarily misidentified as an asteroid before astronomers corrected the records.
Unlike objects orbiting Earth, there are no global laws requiring companies to track spacecraft and debris once they drift into deep space. This lack of regulation adds to the growing issue of misidentifications.
In a 2024 statement, the American Astronomical Society urged more transparency in tracking deep-space objects. Without stricter measures, false alarms and costly errors could become far more common.