What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster voyaging through the cosmos.
Yep, you read that right.
The infinite vastness of outer space isn't exactly conducive to terrestrial vehicles, like the sports car manufactured by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's company. Perhaps that's why the Minor Planet Center didn't initially consider the possibility when the organization announced the discovery on Jan. 2 of the unusual asteroid, complete with an official name: 2018 CN41.
But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center issued an editorial notice that it would be deleting 2018 CN41 from its records.
The reason was simple, if at first nonsensical: The object not only was definitely not an asteroid, but wasn't any sort of space object at all. Rather, it was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster.
Why, you might reasonably ask, is a convertible car traveling through orbit?
As some spaceflight enthusiasts may recall, the Tesla vehicle was launched up into the cosmos in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt while Musk's SpaceX was testing its Falcon Heavy rocket. At the time, SpaceX even went so far as to include a mannequin wearing a white spacesuit seated in the driver's side.
The out-of-this-world case of mistaken identity may be good for a few laughs. But such mishaps also tend to rankle astronomers who say the unregulated frontier of deep space could pose a growing challenge to tracking potential dangerous objects, according to the outlet Astronomy.
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The would-be asteroid was first spotted by an amateur astronomer parsing the Minor Planet Centers' archive who hoped he had discovered a near-Earth object, Astronomy reported.
The Minor Planet Center is the official authority for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. Founded in 1947 under the International Astronomical Union, it operates at the Center for Astrophysics, a research institute jointly operated by the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
With help from professional astronomers, the mistaken identification was quickly resolved.
According to the Minor Planet Center's notice regarding the deletion, turns out the object was the Roadster, along with the Falcon Heavy rocket's upper stage.
The 2008 Tesla Roadster hitched a ride Feb. 6, 2018 on a Falcon Heavy launching from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on the historic launch pad 39A - the site of the space agency's Apollo moon mission launches.
The launch received a great deal of publicity at the time, both due to the novelty of the 230-foot rocket's payload and because it was the Falcon Heavy's maiden flight. The Roadster's cosmic drive came because Musk wanted something more exciting than a block of concrete typically used on a new rocket's demonstration flight to simulate the mass of a spacecraft.
The Roadster's sole passenger was a mannequin named Starman, who had donned the same white spacesuit now ubiquitous for NASA astronauts on missions to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX Dragon capsules.
In the years since, the Roadster has continued to cruise through deep space.
Because of the Tesla Roadster's fame, it's included in a database maintained by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab called Horizons, according to Astronomy. However, the outlet noted that disclosing artificial bodies' trajectories in deep space is not standard.
"If left unchecked, astronomers say the growing number of untracked objects could hinder efforts to protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids," Astronomy reported.
Matthew Payne, the director of the Minor Planet Center, said in an email to Astronomy that the organization is already noticing an uptick in reports of artificial objects. Payne told Astronomy that MPC is collaborating with JPL on a system to better detect and filter out artificial objects from its observational database.
USA TODAY reached out Friday afternoon to the Minor Planet Center for comment.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com