![\"Where](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/An-amateur-astronomer-made-a-tiny-mistake-when-he-spotted-the-Tesla-Roadster-that-Elon-Musk-and-Spac.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Remember the Tesla<\/a> Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space? One amateur astronomer has spotted it and it\u2019s caused him some concern.<\/p>\n If you cast your mind back to 2018, you\u2019ll recall the magnificent sight of a Tesla Roadster heading into orbit on the back of a SpaceX rocket.<\/p>\n In the years since, plenty have tracked the EV\u2019s trajectory as it orbited Earth.<\/p>\n Along the way, one amateur astronomer caused some panic<\/a> due to a mix-up.<\/p>\n This Tesla Roadster became spaceborne eight years ago<\/p>\n History was made on February 6 2018, when a Tesla Roadster was launched into space.<\/p>\n With an astronaut named \u2018Starman\u2019 in the drivers seat, the Roadster was strapped onto the back of a SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket.<\/a><\/p>\n Usually test flights of new rockets would contain \u2018mass simulators\u2019 in the form of concrete or steel blocks.<\/p>\n But that didn\u2019t appeal to Elon Musk.<\/p>\n \u201cThat seemed extremely boring,\u201d Musk wrote in a previous Instagram post.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n In the years since, practically every facet of this amazing voyage has been covered, from the soundtrack of David Bowie blasting in Starman\u2019s helmet<\/a> to the possibility of the Roadster hitting Earth.<\/a><\/p>\n Which neatly brings us onto the story of one amateur astronomer who caused quite a stir.<\/p>\n How an amateur astronomer caused a fair bit of panic<\/p>\n When you\u2019re an amateur astronomer mapping the skies, a red car isn\u2019t going to appear evidently clear to you \u2013 it\u2019ll just look like a tiny dot.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s understandable why this Turkish man was panicked when he spotted what appeared to be an asteroid heading towards Earth.<\/p>\n \u201cTo a telescope, an artificial object and a rock in the same orbit look pretty similar without a lot of detailed follow-up investigation,\u201d Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, told Smithsonian magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts logged the discovery.<\/p>\n Given that it was less than 150,000 miles from Earth, it was qualified as a near-Earth object, meaning it was worth monitoring.<\/p>\n The idea of an asteroid hitting the Earth is always going to provoke some feelings of unease, as demonstrated by Hollywood films like Deep Impact and Armageddon.<\/p>\n But within 17 hours of logging the discovery, the Minor Planet Center had to delete it from its records after realizing it was a car.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first case of mistaken identity either, with at least four spacecraft added and deleted from MPC\u2019s record books between 2020 and 2022, Astronomy.com reported.<\/a><\/p>\n Where is the Tesla Roadster now? <\/p>\n One element of the story is accurate, to an extent, and that\u2019s the notion that the Roadster could eventually collide with the Earth.<\/p>\n Well, we say collide \u2013 it\u2019ll almost entirely vaporize upon entering the atmosphere, posing no risk to anyone on the ground.<\/p>\n And we\u2019re talking about millions of years away.<\/p>\n But at this moment in time, where exactly is the Roadster and its spaceman driver?<\/p>\n At the time of this article being written, it is more than 81,713,000 miles from Earth, travelling towards us at a speed of 14,226 miles per hour, according to whereisroadster.com.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784369842_71_An-amateur-astronomer-made-a-tiny-mistake-when-he-spotted-the-Tesla-Roadster-that-Elon-Musk-and-Spac.webp\")
<\/a>SpaceX<\/p>\n![\"Amateur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Elon_Musks_Tesla_Roadster_40143096241-1-1024x576.webp.webp\")
<\/a>Wikicommons<\/p>\n
![\"Where](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Space-Roadster.webp\")
<\/a>whereisroadster.com<\/p>\n