The Minor Planet Center announced in January that an amateur astronomer discovered a new asteroid. However, the MPC deleted the object from its registry less than a day later. The reason? It was a Tesla Roadster, the same one that SpaceX launched into orbit in 2018. Between the growing fleet of communications satellites and the planned commercial space stations, space is becoming increasingly crowded and humanity is losing track of what we're dumping up there.

Peter Veres, an MPC astronomer, explained to Smithsonian Magazine that the amateur from Turkey cross-referenced a catalog of artificial satellites and sat_id, a third-party software. However, the red Roadster didn't appear in the database and was orbiting the Sun, so it was assumed to be an asteroid. It's not surprising that the first production car in orbit slipped through the cracks because the MPC registry has added newly discovered 588 near-Earth objects so far this year.

The Tesla Roadster was a dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy rocket's first test in 2018. The car launched into space was Musk's personal roadster, a suggestion that he fielded from Twitter. A mannequin in a SpaceX spacesuit was put in the driver's seat dubbed "Starman" and the sound system was set to blare David Bowie's "Space Oddity," adding to the cringy joke. It's a much larger object than what appeared in images and videos. The car isn't free-floating in orbit but is permanently fixed to the upper stage of a Falcon Heavy rocket.