Less than 24 hours after the Minor Planet Center announced a new asteroid, it said the object was actually Musk's electric car launched into space as payload on a rocket.

The discovery of a new asteroid this month has turned out to be Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster launched by SpaceX in 2018.

The Tesla Roadster, launched by SpaceX in 2018, was mistakenly identified as a near-Earth asteroid, raising concerns over space debris tracking.

The “asteroid” wasn’t a space rock after all. It was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space to much fanfare in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt during the maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The car, complete with a mannequin named “Starman” in the driver’s seat, had been orbiting the Sun ever since.

The Minor Planet Center seemingly mistook Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster for a small body in space earlier this month, much to the fascination of the billionaire.

Avi Loeb shares the story of how a Tesla Roadster had some astronomers convinced for a time that they had discovered a new asteroid.

Musk launched his personal Tesla Roadster into space on February 6, 2018, as a test payload for the Falcon Heavy rocket.

An object that was incorrectly identified by an amateur astronomer as an asteroid has turned out to be a Tesla Roadster. Earlier this month, on Jan. 2, a new asteroid called 2018 CN41 was announced by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.