Mystery 'Asteroid' In Earth's Orbit Is Something Completely Different – And It's Musk's Fault...

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Elon Musk is responsible for unleashing a mystery ⁘ asteroid ⁘ that has been spotted orbiting the Earth and closer than the Moon.

Scientists with the Minor Planet Centre (MPC) designated extra terrestrial object 2018 CN41 on January 2 this year after it was spotted by a Turkish amateur astronomer. Before its designation it was seen orbiting within 150,000 miles of the planet, closer than the Moon , meaning it could be classified as a Near-Earth Object (NEO).

But just hours after making the new discovery, the Massachusetts-based MPC announced it had purged 2018 CN41 from its records, with officials having discovered it was, in fact, man-made debris that was purposefully catapulted into orbit. The ⁘asteroid⁘ they found, was the product of an Elon Musk marketing ploy.

In February 2018, Musk put together a crossover of his two companies, Telsa and SpaceX, when he strapped a Tesla Roadster payload piloted by a space-suited dummy to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and launched the ship into space. The 2010 Roadster has spent the last six years, 11 months and 19 days following the successful test mission in orbit.

The car received an International Designator (COSPAR ID) of 2018-017A and Satellite Catalogue number (SATCAT) of 43205 after launch, with the MPC citing its COSPAR ID when announcing it would withdraw the new designation from its records. The organisation said in a statement that it would be listed as ⁘omitted⁘.

Speaking to Astronomy magazine, the citizen scientist who originally discovered the object said they had barely considered the launch of the Falcon Heavy when submitting his find to the MPC. The amateur astronomer, who preferred to be identified only as ⁘G⁘, questioned his findings after looking through records kept by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

⁘I failed — the Falcon launch had never crossed my mind. I almost concluded it was an actual NEO and stopped looking, but I asked around on the Minor Planet Mailing List just to erase my final doubts.⁘