The newly discovered asteroid, named 2018 CN41, turned out to be a Tesla launched into space by SpaceX in 2018.

What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly-discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster voyaging through the cosmos.

The wannabe asteroid, announced on Jan. 2 as 2018 CN41, is actually a Tesla Roadster launched into space years ago by SpaceX ...

Major astronomy body the Minor Planet Centre (MPC) was forced to list the discovery - made by a citizen scientist - as "omitted" following a case of mistaken identity ...

At the beginning of the year, scientists at the Minor Planet Center at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, ...

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 “asteroid” wasn’t a space rock after all. It was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space to much ...

A day after the astronomers with the Minor Planet Center registered 2018 CN41, it was deleted on Jan. 3 when they revealed that it was in fact Musk’s roadster. The center said on its website ...

However, the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the agency responsible for cataloging asteroids, quickly retracted the classification ...

On January 2, the Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of the unique asteroid 2018 CN41, but soon had to remove the object from the official li ...

It looked like an asteroid, but it was a Tesla: the space mix-up involving the celestial object 2018 CN41 was resolved in a few hours. Initially cataloged as a new asteroid, it was later ...

A strange object recently spotted orbiting Earth has been identified as a Tesla Roadster. Initially classified as asteroid "2018 CN41" by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) on January 2, 2025, the object ...