The newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster that was launched into space

A day after astronomers at the Minor Planet Center recorded 2018 CN41, it was deleted on January 3 when they revealed it was actually Musk’s car.

The 2018 CN41 registration was removed after “indication that the orbiter matches an artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy upper stage, with a Tesla Roadster. The designation 2018 CN41 has been deleted and will be listed as deleted,” the center said on its website.

Debris from a SpaceX spacecraft streams across the sky

Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts confused it with an asteroid earlier this month. (SpaceX via Getty Images)

SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX’s massive Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018.

It was expected that the car would enter an elliptical orbit around the sun, go beyond Mars slightly and return towards Earth, but it clearly exceeded the orbit of Mars and maintained its stability. Go to the asteroid beltAccording to what Musk said at the time.

SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX’s massive Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

When the car was mistaken for an asteroid earlier this month, it was less than 150,000 miles from Earth, which is closer than the moon’s orbit, according to the journal Astronomy, meaning astronomers wanted to monitor how close it was to Earth.

The powerful Webb Telescope captures images of one of the oldest supernovas ever

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), told Astronomy magazine that the error shows problems with untracked objects.

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched his previous personal car into orbit at that time. (Justin Sullivan)

“Worst case scenario, you spend a billion dollars to launch a space probe to study an asteroid, and you don’t realize it’s not an asteroid until you get there,” he said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Fox News Digital has reached out to SpaceX for comment.