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.

The discovery of a new asteroid this month has turned out to be Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster launched by SpaceX in 2018.

The “asteroid” wasn’t a space rock after all. It was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space to much fanfare in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt during the maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The car, complete with a mannequin named “Starman” in the driver’s seat, had been orbiting the Sun ever since.

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.

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.

Musk launched his personal Tesla Roadster into space on February 6, 2018, as a test payload for the Falcon Heavy rocket.

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

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