Scientists Found a New 'Asteroid' Orbiting Too Close to Earth — Turns Out, It Was Elon Musk’s Car

Billionaire Elon Musk’s automotive and clean energy company, Tesla is set to have an astronomical impact, literally, on Earth. In a bizarre misinterpretation by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union, the discovery of a new asteroid orbiting near Earth was later identified as Musk’s car, the Tesla Roadster. As strange as that sounds, the car was launched in February 2018 while attached to the Falcon Heavy Upper-stage booster, per an official report by the Minor Planet Center.

Initially unaware of its origin, the center announced the Near-Earth Object (NEO) dubbed 2018 CN41 after the year and month of its discovery through telescopic observations, on January 2, 2025. It was identified as an NEO essentially due to its eccentric orbit that crosses the orbits of Mars and Earth. The distance between the object and Earth was estimated to be less than 240,000 kilometers (150,000 miles), which is less than two-thirds of the distance to the Moon, per Medium. 

17 hours after the announcement, the authorities recognized that they had erred and issued a correction notice publicly. They confirmed that the recently discovered NEO was actually a Tesla Roadster. “The designation 2018 CN41, announced in MPEC 2025-A38 on Jan 2, 2025 UT, is being deleted. The object was reported through the identifications pipeline as a 3-nighter linkage found in the isolated tracklet file and more tracklets were linked in the ITF, leading to a small object on a heliocentric NEO orbit," the official statement said. It continued that the NEO’s orbit matched that of the artificial object 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla car, personally driven by Musk prior to launch. 

“The designation 2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted,” the statement concluded. The orbital period of the car was recorded at 1.53 years. The Minor Planet Center holds the authority to discover and handle reports on orbits of new asteroids, comets, and small bodies appearing in the Solar System. According to IFL Science, such misinterpretations are quite common in the organization as newly spotted asteroids are later identified as already-known objects. In 2007, the Rosetta spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency was also identified as an astronomical object 2007 VN84, later deleted.

With the origin of the 2018 CN14 revealed, some scientists fear a future collision with Earth owing to the object’s chaotic orbit. But Musk is probably content as it will not happen anytime soon. In a 2018 study published in the Aerospace Journal, theoretical calculations of its future trajectory suggest that the Tesla Roadster might collide with Earth within a few millions of years. In October 2020, SpaceX (@SpaceX) proudly announced that the Tesla vehicle closely approached Mars for the first time, at about 5 million miles away from the planet. Interestingly, Musk had a creative approach to the endeavor as a mannequin named Starman wearing a spacesuit seemed to drive the vehicle orbiting in space. 

“Starman, last seen leaving Earth, made its first close approach with Mars today—within 0.05 astronomical units, or under 5 million miles, of the Red Planet,” the caption declared on X (formerly Twitter). Jonathan Dowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told CNN that the vehicle will pass by Earth in 2047 at a close distance of about 5 million kilometers. Meanwhile, the roadster has a 22% chance of crashing on the planet in the future and a 12% chance of hitting both Venus and the Sun respectively, the study stated.