A newly discovered asteroid turns out to have launched a Tesla Roadster into space
Elon Musk’s sense of humor is out of this world.
Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched the Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers at the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts linked it to an asteroid earlier this month.
A day after astronomers with the Minor Planet Center registered 2018 CN41, it was removed on Jan. 3 when they revealed that it was actually Musk’s roadster.
The center said on its website that the registration of 2018 CN41 was removed after “it was determined that the orbit matches the artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage and Tesla Roadster. The name 2018 CN41 is being removed and will be listed as abandoned .”
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Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched the Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers at the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts linked it to an asteroid earlier this month. (SpaceX via Getty Images)
SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the first flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018.
The roadster was expected to enter an elliptical orbit around the sun, briefly pass Mars and return to Earth, but it apparently skipped the orbit of Mars and continued into the asteroid belt, according to Musk at the time.
SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the first flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
When the roadster was identified as an asteroid earlier this month, it was less than 150,000 miles from Earth, which is the closest to the moon’s orbit, according to Astronomy Magazine, meaning astronomers will want to monitor how close it gets to Earth.
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Center for Astrophysics (CfA) astronomer Jonathan McDowell told Astronomy magazine that the error reflects problems with untracked objects.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first vehicle into orbit at that time. (Justin Sullivan)
“At worst, you spend a billion launching space probes to study an asteroid and realize it’s not an asteroid when you get there,” he said.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
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