Newly discovered near-Earth asteroid isn't an asteroid at all -- it's Elon Musk's Tesla [View all]

Astronomers have been left red-faced after announcing the discovery of a new near-Earth asteroid — only to realize that the supposed space rock was the remains of Elon Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster and its spacesuit-clad driver "Starman."

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On Jan. 2, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) added a new object, dubbed 2018 CN41, to its list of near-Earth asteroids. The supposed space rock was identified by an unnamed amateur astronomer in Turkey using years of publicly available data, Astronomy.com reported. However, just 17 hours later, the MPC released an editorial notice retracting the discovery after the citizen scientist realized they had made a mistake.

The Tesla Roadster, which was previously used by Elon Musk, was launched into space on Feb. 6, 2018, as the test payload for the maiden launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The publicity stunt garnered widespread attention at the time, partly due to Starman — a mannequin in the car's driving seat that was wearing a likely defective spacesuit and "listening" to David Bowie's album "Space Oddity" on loop.

The car and its driver headed toward Mars after escaping Earth's gravity and were supposed to enter a stable orbit around the Red Planet, which raised alarms at the time that it could become a potential Martian "biothreat" if it accidentally crash-landed there. However, the pair overshot their target and instead entered a stable orbit around the sun. Now, it circles the sun and occasionally zooms past Mars.