Elon Musk’s sense of humor is out of this world.
Seven years after SpaceX’s CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers out the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts mistook it for an asteroid earlier this month.
A day after Minor Planet Center astronomers registered 2018 CN41, it was removed on January 3 when they revealed it was in fact Musk’s roadster.
The center said on its website that the registration of 2018 CN41 was removed after “it was pointed out that the track corresponds to an artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster. The designation 2018 CN41 is removed and will be omitted are noted.”
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Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers at the Minor Planet Center of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts mistook it for an asteroid earlier this month. (SpaceX via Getty Images)
SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX’s massive Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018.
The roadster was expected to go in an elliptical orbit around the sun, slightly past Mars and back towards Earth, but apparently it overshot the orbit of Mars and stayed go to the asteroid beltMusk said at the time.
SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX’s massive Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images))
When the roadster was mistaken for an asteroid earlier this month, it was within 150,000 miles of Earth, which is closer than the orbit of the moon, according to Astronomy Magazine. This means that astronomers would want to monitor how close it gets to Earth.
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Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) told the journal Astronomy that the error highlights the problems with untracked objects.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched his former personal car into orbit at the time. (Justin Sullivan)
“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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Fox News Digital has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
