The Minor Planet Center (MPC) seemingly mistook billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. TSLA Roadster for a small body in space earlier this month, much to the fascination of the billionaire.
What Happened: The MPC, responsible for the designation of minor bodies in the solar system such as asteroids and comets, announced on Jan. 2 that it had discovered an object in space designated 2018 CN41.
However, the organization put out a notice a day later saying that the designation was being deleted after identifying that the object’s orbit matched that of the Falcon Heavy upper stage with the Tesla Roadster.
Musk launched his own personal red Tesla Roadster into space in February 2018 in a highly-publicized test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The billionaire entrepreneur also placed a spacesuit-wearing dummy named “Starman” behind the wheel.
"My car is orbiting Earth and Mars," Musk wrote in a post on social media X following the news.
According to a third-party Tesla Roadster tracking website, the vehicle is located 238,987,400 miles from Earth at the time of writing. The roadster is positioned 293,723,237 miles from Mars and 152,441, 919 miles from the Sun, as per the website.
Tesla’s New Roadster: Tesla intends to start production of the new Roadster in 2025. The sports car will be a tribute to Tesla's first EV – the limited-production original Roadster produced by the company between 2008 and 2012.
The new generation Roadster prototype was showcased at the end of the event dedicated to unveiling the Tesla Semi on November 16, 2017. Tesla then said the vehicle would be available starting in 2020 and priced around $200,000.
However, the production timeline for the vehicle has been pushed several times since.
In February, Musk said that the upcoming Tesla Roadster can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 1 second, lower than the company’s initial estimate of 1.9 seconds. The vehicle relies on a collaboration between Musk’s two companies- Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX- to provide the incredible performance, he added.
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Photo courtesy: SpaceX
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