USA TODAY What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster voyaging through the cosmos. Yep, you read that right. The infinite vastness of outer space isn't exactly conducive to terrestrial vehicles, like the sports car manufactured by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's company. Perhaps that's why the Minor Planet Center didn't initially consider the possibility when the organization announced the discovery on Jan. 2 of the unusual asteroid, complete with an official name: 2018 CN41. But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center issued an editorial notice that it would be deleting 2018 CN41 from its records. The reason was simple, if at first nonsensical: The object not only was definitely not an asteroid, but wasn't any sort of space object at all. Rather, it was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster. Why, you might reasonably ask, is a convertible car traveling through orbit? As some spaceflight enthusiasts may recall, the Tesla vehicle was launched up into the cosmos in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt while Musk's SpaceX was testing its Falcon Heavy rocket. At the time, SpaceX even went so far as to include a mannequin wearing a white spacesuit seated in the driver's side. The out-of-this-world case of mistaken identity may be good for a few laughs. But such mishaps also tend to rankle astronomers who say the unregulated frontier of deep space could pose a growing challenge to tracking potential dangerous objects, according to the outlet Astronomy.