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.

In 2018, during the launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, Elon Musk sent a Tesla Roadster into space, which later led to some confusion.

A brand new mysterious 'asteroid' is causing confusion after it was spotted and submitted by an amateur astronomer, before being designated 2018 CN41. It was less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) away from Planet Earth which qualifies it as a near-Earth object (NEO),