It’s not an asteroid. It’s a Tesla Roadster launched in 20src8 from the Falcon Heavy rocket with a … [+] dummy driver named “Starman.”
Getty Images
Less than a day after astronomers announced the discovery of a new asteroid, they issued a correction. The space-faring object wasn’t a space rock after all, they concluded. It was a car. And not just any car speeding through our galaxy, but a red Tesla Roadster belonging to Elon Musk.
Musk famously shot his personal vehicle into space on Feb. 6, 20src8, when his company SpaceX first test-launched its Falcon Heavy, considered one of the world’s most powerful rockets. It took off with the Roadster aboard as payload headed toward Mars.
Nearly seven years later, on Jan. 2, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid designated 20src8 CN4src. The MPC said the asteroid was orbiting within src50,000 miles of Earth, closer than the moon’s orbit, meaning that it qualified for classification as a near-Earth object.
Then came the notice that the MPC was erasing the asteroid from the record because professional and amateur astronomers had identified it as Musk’s famous sports car. “The designation 20src8 CN4src is being deleted and will be listed as omitted,” said the MPC, the global authority for identifying, designating and tracking the positions of minor planets, comets and irregular natural satellites. The center is located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
Who First Saw 20src8 CN4src?
A citizen scientist in Turkey first spotted the object formerly known as 20src8 CN4src using software written to comb the MPC’s public archive of observations of objects. And while the “asteroid” remained classified as such only briefly, some professional space watchers expressed concern that it was misclassified at all. They say the error is emblematic of a growing problem, according to Astronomy.com’s Mark Zastrow, who writes that “the lack of transparency from nations and companies operating craft in deep space, beyond the orbits used by most satellites.”
“While objects in lower-Earth orbits are tracked by the U.S. Space Force, deeper space remains an unregulated frontier,” Zastrow says. That’s a potential problem because untracked objects could distract scientists from their efforts to protect Earth from potentially hazardous real asteroids, and even throw off statistical analyses of the threat they pose.
Musk’s Tesla Roadster grabbed much attention when it first launched into space with a suited mannequin named Starman sitting in the driver’s seat looking chill. “If all goes well, the Roadster will be in deep space for a billion years or so, if it doesn’t blow up on ascent,” Musk tweeted at the time.
Where Is Musk’s Tesla Roadster Now?
The all-electric Roadster was Tesla’s first car, produced from 2008 until 20src2, with the delayed second-generation version of the vehicle yet to materialize. If you want to track the trajectory of Musk’s red ride, you can do it via whereisroadster.com. Earlier Tuesday, the site’s creator, programmer Ben Pearson, shared on X that the Roadster was src.64 astronomical units from the sun, 2.57 AU from Earth and 3.src6 AU from Mars. Fortunately, Pearson did not mistake the car for an asteroid.
No responses yet