Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Space

Report of Newly-Discovered Asteroid Turns Out to Be... a Tesla Roadster (usatoday.com) 99

Founded in 1947, the Minor Planet Center is the official worldwide authority "for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system," reports USA Today.

Unfortunately, "What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster," The Minor Planet Center didn't initially consider the possibility when the organization announced the discovery on Jan. 2 of the unusual asteroid, complete with an official name: 2018 CN41. But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center issued an editorial notice that it would be deleting 2018 CN41 from its records... According to the Minor Planet Center's notice regarding the deletion, turns out the object was the Roadster, along with the Falcon Heavy rocket's upper stage.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Report of Newly-Discovered Asteroid Turns Out to Be... a Tesla Roadster

Comments Filter:
  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday January 25, 2025 @06:41PM (#65118459)

    and tell him to go and pick up his car?

    • Issue an orbital parking ticket.
      • Issue an orbital parking ticket.

        Need to get the law tested and put in place that an vehicle in free-fall, without a solid base to stop it, is not parked. Also, the police of space must be established to save gov't money (?) and the law they enforce is newly-written space law. How it's already prepared and waiting for court trial is a mystery. I think I read everywhere that it's named in the documents Space Law Universal and Terrestrial.

    • and tell him to go and pick up his car?

      Hehe. Nice.

      But, actually, what's really happening is this: Leon told the scientific minds around him to do what should NOT be done in the development and planning phase, and plan a trajectory that would eventually end up with the car reentering the atmosphere of the earth at just the right angle that it wouldn't burn and the 'dummy rider' would fly out to make room for him. It is also set to land at an angle and reduced velocity to end up right on his property, not damaged and all tires on the ground. T

  • ... asteroid!

    • ... asteroid!

      Your subject line shows hesitation. Say it. Say it. I double dare ya. I double-triple dare ya!! lol

  • Huh, I never would have guessed the meteorite that killed us all would be a roadster.

    Aren't those things designed to avoid obstacles?
    • Aren't those things designed to avoid obstacles?

      Well they seem to have trouble with white trucks and highway medians...

    • Huh, I never would have guessed the meteorite that killed us all would be a roadster.

      Aren't those things designed to avoid obstacles?

      It's mapping the obstacles to create the extra-terrestrial city, at the same time avoiding them. I hope the mapping has already been established that the earth is an obstacle.

    • Why? It's clear the process is working. Your idea just adds extra steps for virtually no gain to prevent incredibly rare and easily correctable errors.

      • Hi, is there anything in your database near location xyz moving in direction xyz? Wow so many steps.
        • The inefficiency isn't in the step. Congrats it's a weekend. You've just delayed announcement of your discovery for 3 days. Your post just now shows you have a fundamental inability to think things changes through in detail. Let me guess, you're an Oracle database migration project manager. ;-)

          • Is that asteroid going somewhere in 3 days? 3 weeks? 3 years? Oh no!

            Why bother checking anything, you might hurt someone's feelings.
            • Is that asteroid going somewhere in 3 days? 3 weeks? 3 years? Oh no!

              Why bother checking anything, you might hurt someone's feelings.

              You already hurt his feelings by bringing it up. *swat*

    • Just a thought.

      That space junk database is an extra expense that must be eliminated. A new one should be created that's privately owned. I think that's what this thing is up there doing. /s

    • The data from the MPC is freely available, no coordination is required beyond what happened. Orbits change and new observations are required to update the orbits. Old object reidentified as existing ones happens all the time when an object becomes more visible than it has been for a while.

      MPC data downloads: https://minorplanetcenter.net/... [minorplanetcenter.net]

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday January 25, 2025 @07:44PM (#65118563)

    Seems so long ago, but SpaceX was getting approval for a test launch and part of the requirement was a test payload would be carried. Normally that would be something like some barrels of concrete and the SpaceX crew asked does it matter what it is as long as it has the mandated mass? Regulators said we don't care. Of course Musk and the crew at SpaceX came up with a busted car for the job.

    It seemed back then it was more innocent, more about having fun Musk era. There were a lot of people around back then (and right here in fact) who hated his guts but it seemed to me there were more reason to like him than not to. Too many people around just wanted to say something nasty about him (often tenuous to reality or just plane untrue) just so they could get a pat on the head from other like minded people. That still happens.

    These days ... well Musk has changed and not for the better.

    • For saying bad things about Elon Musk. Two weathermen just got fired for the privilege.

      People have been saying bad things about him because he hypes up products with features that don't exist and if it wasn't for a government bailout that made his car company profitable despite losing money on every unit made he would be finishing up his prison sentence for SEC violations. It's not legal to lie to investors. But if you make a lot of money for those investors then they just let it slide.

      My initial pr
      • Nobody got their account here deleted for hating him. It's an easy way to farm karma.

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          On the other hand, it also seems like nobody got their account here deleted for idolizing him. Also an easy way to farm karma.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • ...Remember folks, being rich does not mean you're smart, a good person, have the interests of fellow citizens as a priority, etc. Even if they do a good deed, it's often to showcase their products (here have some free starlink that you never asked for, and some cyber trucks donated that are unsuitable to actual truck activities).

          First, as an aside, fuck Starlink. Not because it's bad for providing Internet (how much it scrapes is a whole different story, but assuming it does not), but because it gets the hell in the way of my astronomical views. (no pun intended) I have a military-grade night vision eyepiece (only $3k when I bought it; I'm afraid to look today) and use it to view things that the eye can't see, even in a light-polluted area. Look up and see hundreds of stars, a few planets.. Whoopdee. Look up with it and see mi

    • He was launching junk into space back then, and he's still cluttering up the sky now.

      • I'm guessing you do not depend on Starlink for your Internet service.

        • by caseih ( 160668 )

          Starlink has been a real boon to rural areas. We rely on it here. That said, I'm well aware that Kesler syndrome is well underway now and will one day end civilization as we know it. I'll enjoy good internet service in the meantime.

          • Starlink has been a real boon to rural areas. We rely on it here. That said, I'm well aware that Kesler syndrome is well underway now and will one day end civilization as we know it. I'll enjoy good internet service in the meantime.

            I guess this is where NIMBY transitions to NIMVS. Not in my visual space. Those freaking things are like flies, blocking my view of space beyond earth. Not blocking; let's at least be clear on that. Interfering and distracting to the point that viewing is almost pointless. And I don't like that. Do I want others in shit areas to have Internet? Sure. I worked for telecom before I got injured by a fall from 12ft. Fiber can be run to rural areas with little loss or need of repeater amplification. Man

        • Starlink is an option, and I have the hardware, but I now pay more for a lesser service just to spite Musk.

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          I'm actually curious about that. I was looking it up for my own personal edification and everything I can find says that a single Starlink satellite only covers a diameter of about 15 miles. That's an area of about, 177 square miles (less apparently since there's overlap). There are 6,912 Starlink satellites. So that would be a coverage area of 1,223,424 square miles. That's only about 2.15% of Earth's land area. Plus, since these are orbiting satellites and, also, they need to cover planes and ships at sea

          • I believe that the 15 mile diameter is the design diameter for a single beam. The important thing to understand is that the Starlink satellites use a phased-array - which in practical terms means that they can move the beam around very quickly (on the order of 10 microseconds). The actual area over which they can move the beam is very much larger than the size of the spot - much like a person with a focused flashlight can illuminate (at different times) a much larger area than the spot size of their flash

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              Ah, that makes more sense. It also illustrates just how bad Google has gotten at providing useful results (and how bad the AI is at actually understanding the results it spews out). I tried all kinds of search terms to get this information and everything just came up as 15 mile diameter, no nuance. I suppose part of . it is not Google, part of it is just how information propagates these days kind of like a game of telephone. Of course, that should be one of the strengths of AI agents: the ability to cut thr

    • These days ... well Musk has changed and not for the better.

      The funny part is that he isn't the one who has changed, lol

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        While I agree with you that Musk has not changed substantially, I think we're not actually in agreement that it's just because he was always awful, but it just took a while to see behind the curtain and, as another poster pointed out, a lot of us had to deal with a sunk cost fallacy. It was difficult to accept that this person who seemed to have this real dream of bringing back manned spaceflight was not actually someone to look up to, but actually a greedy, sociopathic, misogynistic, lying, trollish, and w

        • While I agree with you that Musk has not changed substantially, I think we're not actually in agreement that it's just because he was always awful, but it just took a while to see behind the curtain and, as another poster pointed out, a lot of us had to deal with a sunk cost fallacy. It was difficult to accept that this person who seemed to have this real dream of bringing back manned spaceflight was not actually someone to look up to, but actually a greedy, sociopathic, misogynistic, lying, trollish, and weirdly creepy (in many ways) scumbag. I mean, as long as I've known of him (he was not really on my radar back in the zip2 or paypal days) he has always set off alarm bells just to look at, but I've always thought that was just the uncanny valley aspect of his face due to plastic surgery, but maybe it was actually the same kind of creep out I get from people like Steve Jobs, Trump or Tom Cruise. There just seems to be something missing that should be there on a normal human and I can't put my finger on it (and it's not obvious things like way too much orange makeup).

          Chicken and Egg scenario. Which came first, the money to be a creep without remorse or the creepiness without remorse to hoard money? I'm not trolling, I'm really asking. :)

          • by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:47PM (#65122401)

            Chicken and Egg scenario. Which came first, the money to be a creep without remorse or the creepiness without remorse to hoard money? I'm not trolling, I'm really asking. :)

            Ugh, gross. Sorry, I just tried to look up "timeline of Musk's wealth" and google's AI results (which are what 90% of people will look at, are claiming that Musk sold Zip2 in 1999 for $22 million, then invested his Zip2 earnings into X.com, which became Paypal after being purchased by Ebay. Now there's some misinformation. I know the actual reality is that he put the money into x.com in 1999, then merged with Confinity (an older and bigger company) in 2000 to become Paypal. Anyway, so Musk did not have really significant wealth until 1999 and then he was still a long, long way from mega riches. Now, Vivian Musk was not born until 2004, which is the same year he joined the board at Tesla. At that point he was multi-millionaire rich, but not a billionaire by any means yet. Vivian Musk (the Trans daughter he declared dead a few years back) describes him as a largely absentee father who was "narcissistic", "quick to anger", "cold", and "uncaring" when she was a small child. So he appears to have been a creep without remorse fairly early on. In another Fun Musk story, when his first child died at birth (the one Musk claimed he felt the last heartbeat of as he died in his arms, while it was actually his wife who was holding him, because of course it was and Musk is a narcissistic liar) he told his wife to stop crying because she was just being emotionally manipulative. In January of 2000, so only shortly after the x.com formation, and before Paypal, he told his then wife at their wedding reception that he was "the alpha" in their relationship and that basically she would have to obey him. This was immediately after marriage, so I would say waiting until you've entrapped someone into marriage and then springing that garbage on them is pretty creepy.

            Also, people don't tend to become creeps overnight, so it is pretty likely Musk was a creep years before that, which would make him a creep when he was just the child of a modestly rich family (with multiple homes, servant, etc. ) Of course, that does not actually argue against the theory that being overprivileged makes people creepy and it does seem he was always pretty privileged as a well-off white South African during Apartheid, even before the massive fortune.

            • Creepy mutt with a sweater creep?

            • Musk has always been a weirdo. The question you should be asking yourself is why the media chose to hide such weirdness, or gloss over it, for so long. And why they chose to highlight it recently.
              Hint: it's political. Had she simply done what he was told, he'd still be portrayed as an eccentric genius by most media.
              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                I'm sure the political aspect does have some relevance for some media. Although, I don't see the problem if it just means that they're covering him honestly rather than toadying and acting like they're his PR department. Honestly, I've seen so many Musk glowing puff pieces over the years it's a bit sickening. As for the question of why, I think it's pretty obvious that editorial influence favors the rich and powerful who might throw advertising dollars to the organization, not to mention that the wealthy ow

              • He literally plasters his political views over his own social media service for anyone to read without any other media.
    • Even in the year the Tesla was launched into space, Elon was already a pedo(*). So no, he wasn't more innocent then, it's just that he's been given more rope to hang himself and it's become more obvious.

      (*) don't take my word for it, ask Elon himself what a pedo is and why he is one.

      • Even in the year the Tesla was launched into space, Elon was already a pedo(*). So no, he wasn't more innocent then, it's just that he's been given more rope to hang himself and it's become more obvious.

        (*) don't take my word for it, ask Elon himself what a pedo is and why he is one.

        That's not a bad idea. Seeing the "random" meme that is the response might actually shed some light on the topic because he, as proven, feels powerful enough to do anything without backlash that matters and can't control himself (meaning think before acting). I'm being broad here without a diagnosis to apply, but that's not what this is about.

    • by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:22AM (#65119003)

      Too many people around just wanted to say something nasty about him (often tenuous to reality or just plane untrue) just so they could get a pat on the head from other like minded people. That still happens.

      I used to think like that. Now I realize that maybe those people just knew better than me. I mean, I remember even defending Musk in his "pedo guy" kerfuffle. Of course that was mostly because it seemed like the other guy started it. Frankly even then I recognized him as a narcissist addicted to the spotlight because the way I saw that conflict was two people craving attention and jealous that the other had any. After all, the other guy did seem like he was milking his role in providing some (admittedly probably useful) referrals to turn himself into a sort of unofficial spokesman for the rescue effort. Of course, the retired Thai Navy SEAL diver who drowned during the rescue effort did sort of demonstrate that some alternative approaches might have been a good idea.
      Anyway, long before he bought Twitter and really started going off the deep end publicly and demonstrated just how greedy (both for money and power) he was, and well before he started sending poop emojis to any requests for comments at Twitter, or fired just about everyone there, and also well before he made what was pretty much indistinguishable from a Nazi salute (and which any decent human being, if they really had done it accidentally, would have at least acknowledged), it became clear that he was kind of a scumbag. It came out in bits and pieces. His habit of firing people on the spot if he was having a bad day, his misogyny, his creepy breeder fetish, the fact that, based on his public statements about his supposed work habits, he was either a filthy liar or a neglectful father, the fact that he was obviously a fabulist/liar and it went well beyond just optimistic statements, the bitter complaints about being shackled by the same regulations everyone else is, the drug abuse, and on and on. The funny thing is, during all of this, I came to the conclusion that he was just a really scummy person while I was still under the impression he was left-leaning. Now of course if you express a negative opinion of Musk, right wingers will accuse you of partisanship, but I genuinely just realized he was a terrible human being in a completely non-partisan way.

      Also, I used to think he was a fan of Douglas Adams and Iain M. Banks based on the Roadster stunt (there's a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide in the glovebox) and the fact that all of the barges were named after starships from the Culture series. However, you would think that someone who is an actual fan of the Culture series would have had at least enough comfort with the idea of transgenderism (and transhumanism beyond that) not to disown his trans daughter. I mean, we're talking about a guy who started a company to create cyborgs, and is probably up for human brain uploads, genetic modification, all that, but somehow he can't handle gender re-assignment? Something is just messed up with the man. Maybe it was just some of his people at SpaceX who were the sci-fi fans, I'm not sure.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        you would think that someone who is an actual fan of the Culture series would have had at least enough comfort with the idea of transgenderism (and transhumanism beyond that) not to disown his trans daughter

        You might also think that people would check facts before forwarding rumours to thousands of people! But no, its a bad story that fits with your pre-conceived beliefs, so no checking happens. The details are disputed, but is was she who rejected him, and given Musk's knack for pissing people off, I believe it.

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          The details are disputed, but is was she who rejected him, and given Musk's knack for pissing people off, I believe it.

          I assume that you're not a parent and don't understand being a parent. Either that, or you're a really bad one. As a parent, you don't disown your children because they "rejected" you. You certainly don't go around saying things like ""My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus." and especially not to the entire world! That's just a sick, sick thing to do and any parent who isn't a monster simply does not do that.

          Also, your assertion that I did not "check facts before forwarding rumours to thousan

          • by quenda ( 644621 )

            You begin an argument with a bitter insult. That tells us all we need to know about you. No need to read the wall of text.

            • You begin an argument with a bitter insult. That tells us all we need to know about you. No need to read the wall of text.

              Are you trying to win by having the last word or something? Arguments don't usually begin with "I'd just like to say to you, regarding the presumably kind sir to whom I am directing points of information about, there is a lot to pack in to one talking point."

              Unless it's just a reassembled version of "proper ways to argue about something that really irritates you without hurting the other's feelings".

              This isn't a relationship between two people. It's a threaded comment area where those who choose to identi

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              You refuse to actually even provide any supporting evidence for me supposedly forwarding some kind of rumor. You don't even name it. Also, after insulting me in your post, you use a sad excuse that I supposedly insulted you to avoid actually addressing any of the points I made in my post. Incidentally, my post is long because I list multiple details supporting the idea that Musk is a bad father because I know if I just used a few (for example three), you would find one to dismiss, not even address the other

    • No, everybody else changed.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The payload does matter, it wasn't quite a "we don't care" situation with the regulators. There is the possibility of the rocket exploding or falling back to Earth, so whatever the payload is must be safe in the event that happens.

      I imagine they removed the battery from the car and maybe replaced it with a dummy mass. All fluids drained to avoid issues with them boiling off in vacuum.

      • My memory is a little hazy and given who we're talking about I refuse to expend the energy to check but wasn't the car put in a tank that was then topped off with concrete? The livestream of the car flying through space was actually of a model attached to the outside of the craft.
  • Will not surprise me if this story gets repeated every decade or so with different astronomers discovering it.

  • A million a month till they come and pick it up should do the trick...
    • A million a month till they come and pick it up should do the trick...

      At that rate he could leave it up there for a long, long time.

      Leon's $440 billion divided by $1 million a month would be 440,000 months or 36,666 years.

      Make it $5 billion a month if you want to see anything happen in your lifetime.

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        That's where it gets a bit tricky though. It's not about his net worth. It would be billed to Spacex, of which Elon only owns 42% (he has control of the company though, but it's more than half other people's money). Their revenue varies year to year, but it's never more than single-digit billions. Their actual income is only something like $550 million. So 12 million per year, while only a little over 2% of their income would still be a reasonably large amount to lose and more of that would be coming out of

  • Back when it was launched, my neighbor asked what kind of mileage it would get. Using rough estimates for the rocket fuel used at launch, I figured that, by the time it reached the moon, it was getting about 24 mpg. Anyone willing to hazard a guess at what the figure is today?

  • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday January 25, 2025 @10:05PM (#65118797)

    ”..turned out to be a Tesla Roadster, “

    Uh, what do you mean a Tesla Roadster? Let’s not say it like there’s another three dozen of those floating around out there that someone else put there.

    Pretty sure at this point that’s still THE Tesla Roadster in space.

    • Apologies, Imma "Well actually" you here. Most people these days when they think "Tesla Roadster" think of the promised vehicle that will come "some day" that some people put $500K deposits on. But Tesla's first car -- before the Model S, before the model 3, before the model Y -- was a "Roadster" that was made between 2008 and 2012 or thereabouts. They made a few thousand of them (IIRC they mostly just took Lotus Elans and changed all the guts to be electric, but I could be wrong about that).
      • (IIRC they mostly just took Lotus Elans and changed all the guts to be electric, but I could be wrong about that).

        Mk. 2 Elises, but yes. Elans were the previous Lotus.

    • by myrdos2 ( 989497 )

      I love the idea that in some distant future, when humanity is long-forgotten, aliens will come to our solar system and find a Tesla roadster floating in space. It's just there for like, no reason.

  • The official designation of this asteroid should obviously by it's license plate number.

    If there's no plate on the car, then Tesla-year-model or whatever.

    • The official designation of this asteroid should obviously by it's license plate number.

      If there's no plate on the car, then Tesla-year-model or whatever.

      Now you've got me wondering if they have a record of the VIN# before they sent it up.... or if it even got to the stage of getting a VIN.

  • Exciting! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Saturday January 25, 2025 @11:36PM (#65118877)

    It would be even more exciting if Elon was in the driver's seat of that vehicle, rather than co-piloting a burgeoning Fascist dictatorship.

  • ...if the Roadster car insurance has expired. Just in case...
  • ... But why would they delete that new "asteroid" from their catalogue. It IS an asteroid, or does the definition now insist that such be of natural materials?

    It's a sizable object, in space, that both reflects light & has mass, thus will a) certainly be 'discovered'again and again as amateur equipment improved and b) will continue to be a "thing" out there for (basically) ever.

    So no, seriously, it isn't an asteroid but it still needs to be on the list as launch debris, doesn't it?

    • Crosschecking against the space debris list is hard and adds delays. just ask thegarbz.
      • But....if it's a list of space debris, aren't asteroids a subset of that?
        OK it's not a 'natural' asteroid but still it feels like deleting it is objectively not a useful thing.

  • Asteroids get named by the year of their first viewing. If it was recently discovered it would be 2025 or 2024. So it was observed in 2018. When it was launched.

Did you know that for the price of a 280-Z you can buy two Z-80's? -- P.J. Plauger

Working...