The asteroid that wasn’t

Updated Jan. 27, 2025, 6:32 a.m. | By East Coast Breakfast / Skyye Ndlovu

Astronomers recently discovered an asteroid hurdling towards earth. Sadly, it was just Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster.

Tesla in space — Starman's Tesla Roadster / X

Picture this: top-tier astronomers, some of the brightest minds in the universe, huddled around computers, analysing data. They spot what looks like a dangerous asteroid hurtling through space, closer to earth than the moon itself. Tensions rise. Is it a doomsday rock? Should we call Bruce Willis?

Nope. It’s just Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, casually cruising through the cosmos like it’s on a Sunday drive.

How does this even happen?

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Well, the drama began when Harvard University-affiliated astronomers registered a “new asteroid” on January 2, officially naming it 2018 CN41.

At a distance of 150,000 miles (about 241,401 km) from earth – much closer than our dear old moon – this mysterious object looked like a potential planetary threat.

Barely 17 hours later, their excitement turned to embarrassment when they realised this wasn’t a rogue space rock. Nope, it was that car. You know, the cherry-red Tesla that Elon Musk launched into space back in February 2018 as part of a PR stunt during SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket test.

For anyone who’s forgotten (or repressed the memory), Musk’s quirky idea involved sending a mannequin in a spacesuit (affectionately named “Starman”) behind the wheel of his electric car and blasting it into orbit – because why not?

Just a reminder: There's a Tesla Roadster floating in space. ✨ pic.twitter.com/OgTkdwTjDh
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) June 22, 2023

The Minor Planet Center, which had proudly added 2018 CN41 to its asteroid catalogue, quickly removed it from the records after realising their celestial “discovery” was just Musk’s publicity stunt-turned-space junk.

Understandably, astronomers weren’t amused. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, voiced his frustrations to Astronomy magazine.

“Worst case, you spend a billion launching a space probe to study an asteroid and only realize it’s not an asteroid when you get there.”

Ouch. Can you imagine? A multi-billion-dollar mission to investigate what turns out to be a car commercial on steroids? NASA would never hear the end of it.

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To be fair though, the Tesla Roadster has become a bizarre icon of human ingenuity. Seven years after its launch, it’s still floating out there, looping around the sun in an elliptical orbit. It’s estimated to have travelled over 3.22 billion kilometres, making it the most overachieving electric car of all time.

Some say it’s littering, others argue it’s art. Either way, Starman and his sporty ride have etched themselves into the annals of space history – confusing astronomers and entertaining the rest of us along the way.

So, next time you look up at the night sky, just remember: it’s not just stars, planets, and the odd asteroid up there. Somewhere, a cherry-red Tesla is cruising the cosmic highway, reminding us that humanity’s journey into space isn’t just groundbreaking, it’s also quite comical.

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