Mystery 'asteroid' in Earth's orbit is something completely different – and it's Musk's fault
Major astronomy body the Minor Planet Centre (MPC) was forced to list the discovery - made by a citizen scientist - as "omitted" following a case of mistaken identity
Elon Musk is responsible for unleashing a mystery " asteroid " that has been spotted orbiting the Earth and closer than the Moon.
Scientists with the Minor Planet Centre (MPC) designated extra terrestrial object 2018 CN41 on January 2 this year after it was spotted by a Turkish amateur astronomer. Before its designation it was seen orbiting within 150,000 miles of the planet, closer than the Moon, meaning it could be classified as a Near-Earth Object (NEO).
But just hours after making the new discovery, the Massachusetts-based MPC announced it had purged 2018 CN41 from its records, with officials having discovered it was, in fact, man-made debris that was purposefully catapulted into orbit. The "asteroid" they found, was the product of an Elon Musk marketing ploy.
In February 2018, Musk put together a crossover of his two companies, Telsa and SpaceX, when he strapped a Tesla Roadster payload piloted by a space-suited dummy to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and launched the ship into space. The 2010 Roadster has spent the last six years, 11 months and 19 days following the successful test mission in orbit.
The car received an International Designator (COSPAR ID) of 2018-017A and Satellite Catalogue number (SATCAT) of 43205 after launch, with the MPC citing its COSPAR ID when announcing it would withdraw the new designation from its records. The organisation said in a statement that it would be listed as "omitted".
The centre said: "The designation 2018 CN41, announced in MPEC 2025-A38 on Jan 2, 2025 UT, is being deleted. 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."
Speaking to Astronomy magazine, the citizen scientist who originally discovered the object said they had barely considered the launch of the Falcon Heavy when submitting his find to the MPC. The amateur astronomer, who preferred to be identified only as "G", questioned his findings after looking through records kept by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
They said: "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."
G said they now call the case of mistaken identity the "Tesla incident", adding: "I’m still sort of disappointed it wasn’t a NEO, but it was an interesting experience to say the least. At the very least we managed to filter out some non-minor-planet observations from [the] MPC database."