The car, launched in 2018 on a SpaceX rocket’s upper stage, is one of many human-made objects in deep space that could potentially be mistaken for natural celestial bodies

An object that was incorrectly identified by an amateur astronomer as an asteroid has turned out to be a Tesla Roadster. Earlier this month, on Jan. 2, a new asteroid called 2018 CN41 was announced by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Catch Tallahassee Astronomical Society’s free planetarium show “February Skies over Tallahassee,” at the Fogg Planetarium on Feb. 1.