Where Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is now after it was launched into space and caused amateur astronomer to panic

The article revisits Elon Musk’s 2018 launch of a Tesla Roadster into space and explains how a mistaken discovery by an amateur astronomer sparked short-term concern. The Roadster, with “Starman” in the driver seat, was carried aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018. After years of tracking the vehicle’s orbit, a Turkish amateur astronomer reported seeing an object that looked like an asteroid on a collision path. Jonathan McDowell of the Center for Astrophysics said the confusion is common because an artificial object can resemble a natural rock without follow-up. The Minor Planet Center logged the finding as a near-Earth object given its distance of under 150,000 miles, then removed it within 17 hours after realizing it was a car. The report adds that similar insertions and deletions occurred in MPC records between 2020 and 2022.