Elon Musk's Roadster Mistaken for Asteroid
2025-01-26
An amateur astronomer discovered a near-Earth object that turned out to be Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018. This highlights a growing lack of transparency in deep space, as increasing numbers of spacecraft and rocket debris create confusion with asteroids, wasting observational resources and potentially skewing statistical analyses of hazardous asteroids. The Minor Planet Center is collaborating with JPL to improve identification systems to better differentiate between artificial and natural objects.