Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. NASA's now retired Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe was misidentified as an asteroid several times during its lifetime mapping the universe 1 million miles from Earth. (Image credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team) "Such transparency is essential for promoting space situational awareness, reducing interference between missions, avoiding interference with observations of natural objects, including observations of potentially hazardous asteroids, and ensuring the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies," officials with the AAS's Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (COMPASSE) wrote in the statement at the time. McDowell, who worked on the study as part of COMPASSE's subcommittee on space debris, said the problem may get worse in the years ahead. More and more commercial companies and government agencies are launching satellites and missions into orbit and deep space. In 2024, SpaceX alone shattered records by launching 134 Falcon rocket missions. That's more than some countries fly annually. On Earth, aviation and maritime officials have systems in place to track planes and vessels as they travel around the planet. That's not the case for space, but it should be, McDowell and AAS officials believe. "If you have to file a flight plan for a local flight on Earth, you should have to file a flight plan for an interplanetary flight," McDowell said. AstroForge's Odin satellite is headed to a near-Earth asteroid that was secret for a long time, yet revealed on Jan. 29. 2025. (Image credit: AstroForge) The lack of such a system can lead to more misidentifications of human-built spacecraft by astronomers, and such confusion could have lasting impacts. Elon Musk's Tesla, for example, was initially thought to be a near-Earth asteroid that would approach within just under 150,000 miles (241,000 kilometers) of Earth at its closest point, which is close enough to be catalogued for safety tracking. More cases like that can impact astronomers' search for potentially dangerous asteroids. McDowell said a database such as NASA's Horizons System, operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a good example of a potential centralized tracking system for satellites, defunct spacecraft and rocket stages. The system already has tracking data for "1,436,743 asteroids, 3,992 comets, 293 planetary satellites [including satellites of Earth and dwarf planet Pluto], 8 planets, the sun" and select spacecraft, according to a NASA description. "The worst case scenario is you spend a billion dollars spending sending a spacecraft to an asteroid, and it turns out not to be an asteroid," McDowell told Space.com. "That would be so embarrassing." That's an admittedly extreme and unlikely example, McDowell added, but it illustrates the point. Related Stories: