The discovery of a new asteroid this month has turned out to be Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster launched by SpaceX in 2018.

A story you may have seen recently claims an asteroid spotted this month by an astronomer turned out to be a Tesla in space.

The car, launched in 2018 on a SpaceX rocket’s upper stage, is one of many human-made objects in deep space that could potentially be mistaken for natural celestial bodies

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 Tesla Roadster, launched by SpaceX in 2018, was mistakenly identified as a near-Earth asteroid, raising concerns over space debris tracking.

The “asteroid” wasn’t a space rock after all. It was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space to much fanfare in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt during the maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The car, complete with a mannequin named “Starman” in the driver’s seat, had been orbiting the Sun ever since.

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

Catch Tallahassee Astronomical Society’s free planetarium show “February Skies over Tallahassee,” at the Fogg Planetarium on Feb. 1.