Newly Discovered Near-Earth Asteroid Turns Out To Be Elon Musk’s Trashed Tesla

[Image: SpaceX / X]

Astronomers were left red-faced after announcing the discovery of a new near-Earth asteroid, only to discover that the alleged space rock was the wreckage of Elon Musk’s cherry-red Tesla Roadster and its spacesuit-clad driver “Starman.”

Initially dubbed 2018 CN41, the new near-earth object was first spotted by an amateur astronomer before the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC) added it to their list of things to keep an eye on.

However, just 17 hours later, the MPC released an editorial notice retracting the discovery after the citizen scientists realised they had made a mistake.

This is not the asteroid you’re looking for

Starman launched seven years ago today on Falcon Heavy’s first mission and recently cruised back by Earth in late January pic.twitter.com/lK9jEQSZUv

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 6, 2025

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster was flown into orbit on February 6, 2018, as a test payload for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket’s first flight. The advertising effort attracted worldwide notice at the time.

After escaping Earth’s gravity, the car and its driver were scheduled to reach a stable orbit around the Red Planet, raising concerns that it may become a possible Martian “biothreat” if it crashed there by mistake. However, the two overshot their goal and instead settled into a stable orbit around the sun.

Now, it runs around the sun and occasionally passes by Mars.

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Having completed roughly 4.5 trips around the sun, travelling at roughly 72,000 km/h is probably trashed after being exposed to years of intense radiation from the sun and bombarded by tiny fragments of space rocks. All of which have likely stripped the outer layers of the car and shredded Starman.

If you are keen to see where the Roadster is currently, there is a non-SpaceX website that follows its course. Check it out here.

[Source: Sciencealert]