Less than 24 hours after the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of a new asteroid, they said it was actually Musk's car.

According to research from NASA’s Center of NEO Studies the asteroid is projected to come within 66,000 miles of earth on December 22, 2032. That’s a very long way away by earth standards but in the vast scale of space that’s well within the margin of error.

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

A brand new mysterious 'asteroid' is causing confusion after it was spotted and submitted by an amateur astronomer, before being designated 2018 CN41. It was less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) away from Planet Earth which qualifies it as a near-Earth object (NEO),

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 was discovered by an amateur astronomer based in Turkey.

A near-Earth "asteroid" recently spotted by astronomers poring through telescope data has turned out to be Elon Musk's car. On January 2, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of a new asteroid.