An asteroid discovered near Earth turns out to be Elon Musk’s tesla

A spatial object that astronomers initially identified as an asteroid that seemed to approach Earth dangerously proved to be a tesla launched by Elon Musk in 2018 as part of an advertising campaign.

Earl this month, an amateur astronomer detected what was believed to be the asteroiddesignated 2018 CN41, which gave the impression of approaching the earth.

When the object approached less than 240 thousand kilometers from the earth, a lower distance than the orbit of the moon, fears of a possible collision with the planet.

However, the Center for Minor Planets (MPC), responsible for officially recognizing this type of space objects, corrected its conclusions the next day.

Instead, the agency confirmed that the object in question was a Tesla Roadster Red Cereza, released by Elon Musk during the first flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket of Spacex.

The 2018 CN41 designation, announced in MPEC 2025-A38 on January 2, 2025 UT, is being eliminatedIt was explained in a statement that clarified the confusion.

According to the agency, the orbit of the object coincides with an artificial body identified as 2018-017a, that is, the upper stage of the heavy falcon that carried the Tesla Roadster to the space. Thus, the 2018 CN41 designation was discarded and will officially appear as omitted.

The car, equipped with a dubbed mannequin Starman As a driver, it was released in 2018 as a symbolic payload and, since then, it has been orbiting around the sun.

Fun touch

The Tesla Titan explained at the time that choosing a car instead of the typical concrete block used as a useful load in simulations was only A touch of fun. Everything that lacks emotion is horrible, especially when it comes to companies, so we decided to send something out of the ordinary, something that could arouse emotionshe declared.

The amateur astronomer responsible for the initial discovery of the mysterious object commented that he felt Very excited When he sent the identification to the MPC, but he began to question his nature when analyzing his orbit, he declared to Astronomy.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics, corroborated the suspicions at that time, which led to the MPC to retract its initial identification.

The launch of the Falcon never occurred to meadmitted the amateur astronomer of Türkiye, known simply as G. As he explained, he was about to classify the object as a neo (object close to the Earth) genuine and abandon the search, but decided to consult the mail list of minor planets to clarify his latest doubts.

At least we managed to filter some observations of objects that were not minor planets of the MPC databasehe added.