Less than 24 hours after the Minor Planet Center announced a new asteroid, it said the object was actually Musk's electric car launched into space as payload on a rocket.

SpaceX launched Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space, sending it on an unexpected journey beyond Earth. The car, with a mannequin dubbed "Starman" at the wheel, was meant to orbit the Sun, and it's been cruising through space ever since.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., officially registered the new space rock Jan. 2, saying it was spotted hurling through the final frontier roughly 150,000 miles from Earth, according

The car, launched in 2018 on a SpaceX rocket’s upper stage, is one of many human-made objects in deep space that could potentially be mistaken for natural celestial bodies

Musk launched his personal Tesla Roadster into space on February 6, 2018, as a test payload for the Falcon Heavy rocket.

An object that was incorrectly identified by an amateur astronomer as an asteroid has turned out to be a Tesla Roadster. Earlier this month, on Jan. 2, a new asteroid called 2018 CN41 was announced by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.