A near-Earth "asteroid" recently spotted by astronomers poring through telescope data has turned out to be Elon Musk's car. On January 2, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of a new asteroid.

However, the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the agency responsible for cataloging asteroids, quickly retracted the classification after determining that the object was actually Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, which was sent into space aboard SpaceX’s inaugural Falcon Heavy flight.

At the beginning of the year, scientists at the Minor Planet Center at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, logged the discovery of an asteroid identified by an amateur astronomer. Within a day,

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.

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),