Update: Jan 30th, 2025 08:29 EST On January 2 this year, the Minor Planet Center, part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believed they had discovered a new asteroid. They named it 2018 CN41, found it 149,000 miles from Earth, and classified it as a Near-Earth Object (NEO), meaning it could potentially collide with our planet. However, the excitement quickly deflated: the object was, in fact, a Tesla Roadster launched into space in 2018 by SpaceX, a company owned by Elon Musk. The red car, with a dummy astronaut on board, has been drifting through space, hoping to encounter truly intelligent life away from Earth. The mistake was swiftly recognized and the discovery’s status was amended. But some astronomers are not happy. According to Astronomy magazine, there is an issue with “the lack of transparency from countries and companies operating spacecraft in deep space, beyond the orbits used by most satellites.” The serious problem with the lack of regular in space These astronomers warn that if the lack of control continues, “the growing number of untracked objects could hinder efforts to protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids.” Julia de León, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Spain, shared a similar incident with Spanish newspaper El País, where a group of astronomers from the Halekala Observatory in Hawaii mistook an object. “We received an alert and took spectroscopic data. In the end, it turned out to be space junk […] It’s not common, but we are already facing these issues due to all these satellite constellations.” “It’s like the open sea. Whoever arrives sets the rules; there’s not much regulation. It is recommended that both governments and companies ensure that satellites placed in orbit do not remain there once their useful life ends,” the researcher concluded. Related stories