An asteroid close to Earth! It certainly rang a few alarms at NASA. Now, asteroids pose a significant threat to Earth, and space agencies worldwide, including NASA, continuously track them to assess the chances of impact and the likely destruction potential. Notably, an asteroid that struck Earth millions of years ago was responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs. Now, a major mistake has put the spotlight on the effectiveness of this tracking technology—Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster was wrongly classified as an asteroid. This raises concerns about whether current systems are reliable enough to track actual dangerous asteroids and keep Earth safe.
So, how did a car get labeled as a Near-Earth Object (NEO)—a term used for asteroids and comets that come close to Earth? Here's a bit of background. In 2018, Musk launched a Tesla Roadster aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as a demonstration of the company's progress. The event grabbed attention worldwide, especially with the iconic selfie taken by the car's camera, showing Earth in the background. The vehicle, with a mannequin named ‘Starman' strapped in the driver's seat, has been orbiting the Sun ever since.
But why was this car mistakenly classified as an asteroid? The answer: human error. On January 2, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) database mistakenly recorded the car under the designation 2018 CN41. It even went through the same process used to officially name asteroids.
However, the mistake was quickly realized after further analysis. Within just 17 hours, the classification was reversed, as reported by astronomy.com.
While this Tesla Roadster is just one object floating in space, countless other human-made objects—from satellites to rocket debris—are also present. This raises serious concerns about whether technology might misidentify artificial objects as asteroids while potentially overlooking real threats. Given that asteroids often appear out of nowhere, surprising astronomers and flying dangerously close to Earth, such errors could have serious consequences.
If even the latest tracking technology struggles to distinguish natural space objects from human-made ones, misidentifications will continue to challenge astronomers as space activity increases.
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