A red sports car belonging to Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk was launched into orbit in 2018. It was briefly believed to be an asteroid by an amateur astronomer this week
An object that was incorrectly identified by an amateur astronomer as an asteroid has turned out to be a Tesla Roadster.
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In a bizarre twist, the centre said the object was actually a Tesla Roadster.
There was even some foreshadowing of the possibility that the vehicle could indeed be mistaken for an asteroid. Space expert and asteroid tracker Marco Langbroek told CNN in 2018 that it was “difficult to predict how the orbit will evolve” and “it’s certainly possible that it will be mistaken for an asteroid.”
After Musk announced that the Roadster would travel to space, one person on X asked why.
“I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future,” he said in a post on X in December 2017.
He used software that he wrote in his free time “to parse through the (Minor Planet Center’s) public archive of observations of objects, which anyone can peruse in search of asteroids and other small solar system bodies,” the publication said.
The group said it believes that “spaceflight activities in cislunar and interplanetary space should be conducted in an open and transparent way.”
“Such transparency is essential for promoting space situational awareness, reducing interference between missions, avoiding interference with observations of natural objects, including observations of potentially hazardous asteroids, and ensuring the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies,” according to its statement.
The space dwelling Tesla Roadster was not the only Musk-related object that made headlines recently.
On Wednesday, what appeared to be a fireball was seen streaked across the night’s sky.
A video of the incident was posted online by the American Meteor Society.
The American Meteor Society has been keeping records of fireball reports since 2005. It received dozens of such reports along with videos and images this week from those who witnessed the satellite in the sky.
At the end of its lifespan, satellites use “electric thrusters to lower the orbit to about 250 (kilometres). Then it’s switched off and the atmosphere drags it in over the next week or so,” McDowell said on X.
“It will almost completely burn up. They are retiring and incinerating about 4 or 5 Starlinks every day at the moment, spread across the world, sometimes you get one at night time in the U.S.,” he said.