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 Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., officially registered the new space rock Jan. 2, saying it was spotted hurling through the final frontier roughly 150,000 miles from Earth, according

The case of mistaken identity was quickly resolved, but astronomers say it shows the need for transparency around craft in deep space.

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),

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.