In a very funny moment coming as Elon and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) get to work in the Trump Administration, it was discovered that a Tesla Roadster Elon launched into space to show the launch capability of the Falcon Heavy rocket had tricked Harvard scientists, who initially thought it was an asteroid.
As background, it was a Falcon Heavy test launch in 2018 that saw Elon Musk send a Tesla Roadster into space. The electric car served, in the test, as a dummy payload for the rocket and so was launched into space. The car also featured a dummy mannequin in a space suit that is inside it, and both the mannequin and Roadster are now satellites of the sun. The car, formerly owned and used by Elon, was the first production car ever launched into space.
Now, however, seven years after the momentous launch and funny car moment, Elon’s dummy payload added yet more humor. This time, the sun-orbiting Telsa Roadster tricked astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. They confused it with an asteroid early in January.
The funny moment lasted only for a day. As Fox News Digital reported on the matter of Harvard’s astrophysicists getting unintentionally pranked by Elon, “just one 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.”
Further, Fox News Digital reported that the Minor Planet Center said, describing why the entry was quickly deleted, “it was pointed out the orbit matches an artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster. The designation2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted.”
The Roadster, which was originally expected to orbit Earth and Mars but instead appears to have sailed to the Asteroid Belt and started orbiting the sun, headed back toward Earth thanks to that orbit and, when mistaken for an asteroid earlier in January, Fox News Digital reports, was under 150,000 miles from Earth. That is closer than the Moon’s orbit of Earth.
Commenting to Astronomy Magazine, Center for Astrophysics (CfA) astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said that the Roadster matter shows the issue with untracked objects launched into space. “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,” he said.
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Elon has joked about the matter on X (formerly Twitter). Posting on X, he said, “My car is orbiting Earth and Mars 
” That came in response to a post from X’s Mario Nawfal, who said, “ASTRONOMERS MISTOOK ELON’S ROADSTER FOR AN ASTEROID.. NO, FOR REAL! Astronomers hilariously mistook Elon’s Roadster for an asteroid this month. Seven years after its Falcon Heavy launch, the car drifted past Mars into the asteroid belt, only to swing back 150,000 miles from Earth.Imagine spending billions on a space probe, to find… the beauty of an @tesla floating. Always double-check your ‘asteroids.’ The Roadster? Still orbiting the galaxy.”
Watch Starman in space here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video