Less than 24 hours after the Minor Planet Center announced a new asteroid, it said the object was actually Musk's electric car launched into space as payload on a rocket.

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) deleted the new asteroid from its records just hours after announcing the discovery after realizing the object was actually a cherry-red Tesla Roadster

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., officially registered the new space rock Jan. 2, saying it was spotted hurling through the final frontier roughly 150,000 miles from Earth, according

The case of mistaken identity was quickly resolved, but astronomers say it shows the need for transparency around craft in deep space.

Musk's car was accidentally and briefly classified as an asteroid in 2025. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center issued a bulletin on Jan. 2 announcing 2018 CN41 as a newly discovered near-Earth object.

At the beginning of the year, scientists at the Minor Planet Center at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, logged the discovery of an asteroid identified by an amateur astronomer. Within a day,