Elon Musk's Tesla Spotlights Call for Transparency in Operating Craft in Deep Space

While objects in low Earth orbits are tracked by the U.S. Space Force, deeper space remains an unregulated frontier.

Mark Zastrow

Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM ET

Verified

Edited By: tccjeremy

That’s no asteroid. That’s … a car? [Credit: SpaceX]

Key Takeaways:

An object initially designated as a near-Earth asteroid (2018 CN41) was quickly re-identified as Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, highlighting a recurring problem of artificial objects being mistaken for natural ones in deep space.
This mistaken identity issue stems from a lack of transparency and a central public repository for tracking spacecraft and rocket stages operating beyond Earth orbit, leading to wasted astronomical observation efforts.
Astronomers advocate for mandatory public reporting and updating of deep-space object trajectories by nations and companies to prevent future misidentifications and enhance the detection of actual hazardous asteroids.

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On January 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by citizen scientist H. A. Güler, the object’s orbit was notable: It came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometers) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO)—one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth.

But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid.