Share on Twitter Do you remember that time that Elon Musk used his SpaceX rockets to send a Tesla Roadster to space? It was a pretty cool marketing stunt. The car was launched into space with a dummy astronaut sitting in the driver's seat. The timelapse video of the dummy orbiting the earth is pretty great, and the cabin display with the words "Don't Panic" (a reference to a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) still make me laugh anytime i watch the video. The car was used as a test payload for the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Most people really liked the idea and thought it was a fun and harmless act to make the test a little more entertaining. There were some people that thought it might not be as harmless as they thought. Space is starting to turn into a junkyard. There is debris from satellites, rockets, and other sources. Now there's a car floating around up there for no reason, and it's already causing trouble. Astronomers recently announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid on January 2nd, and they designated it 2018 CN41. It flew within 150,000 miles of Earth, and they designated it as needing to be monitored due to the potential that it may slam into the planet one day. Just 17 days after the discovery the Minor Planet Center released a statement saying that they were deleting the asteroid from their records because it turns out it wasn't an asteroid. 2018 CN41 was actually Elon Musks Tesla. This just highlights the issue of private citizens and companies launching things into space. If the accumulation of junk continues to grow unchecked, it will make it difficult for scientist to protect Earth from asteroids that could genuinely pose a threat to us. The International Space Station Initially constructed in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) is approximately 250 miles above the earth's surface, traveling at 17,500 mph. The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes and completes around 15 orbits daily.