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.

"Hopefully there’s no traffic! [laughing emoji]." Check out even more hilarious reactions below: "Imagine you’re flying through space years from now and you come across this [

Astronomers have retracted the discovery of a new asteroid after realizing the object was the remains of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster and its driver "Starman," which were launched into space in 2018.

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.

The newly discovered asteroid, named 2018 CN41, turned out to be a Tesla launched into space by SpaceX in 2018.

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),