Tesla Roadster Keeps Orbiting the Sun, Mistaken for Asteroid by Amateur Astronomer

The 2018 launch of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy continues to drift in a heliocentric orbit; as of the article, it's about 81.7 million miles from Earth, traveling ~14,226 mph and having completed roughly 5.54 Sun orbits. An amateur Turkish astronomer briefly mistook it for a near-Earth asteroid in 2025 (designation 2018 CN41) before it was withdrawn, illustrating how spacecraft can resemble asteroids in telescope observations. Whereisroadster.com tracks the car’s path, and scientists say Earth collision is extremely unlikely for millions of years; the car has logged thousands of Space Oddity and Life on Mars plays as it cruises the solar system.