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Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

astronomy.com

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Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#61

Post by tumnus »

LiamPowell wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s not a lot of man made objects floating in deep space. DeltaV to get outside earths gravity well is just extremely high.

There's at least 72 according to [1], which does not include upper stages from unmanned missions. You could likely query all of them that have been found from Horizons, but I don't know how to do so off the top of my head. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_...

72 out of around 128 million is about %0.005 which indeed does not seem like a lot.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#62

Post by yellowapple »

minetest2048 wrote: post #49
Reason077 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. But it seems like something is amiss if this error keeps being made. Why didn't the reporting astronomer, or anyone who presumably checked the submission, find the 2018-017A object when searching for it in their database?

Because their software, sat_id can only search Earth-orbiting satellites: > Payne noted that when the Tesla Roadster was originally launched in 2018, the community caught it and flagged it as an artificial object, and the MPC “correctly labeled it as such without assigning a minor planet designation.” But when subsequent observations were archived by the MPC and later identified by G., sat_id failed to locate the Roa…

> As the article mentioned, there is no such thing as space-track.org or celestrak.org where anyone can get trajectories for all deep space spacecraft. The closest thing we have is JPL Horizons, so they're working with them:

That seems like something that's worth fixing as more and more artificial objects get launched into deep space.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#63

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #7

isn't this a good thing? it sets an exciting lower bound on the effectiveness of citizen science detection efforts, and a confirmation that the techniques are sound

Your perspective would've made for a much better article.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#64

Post by minetest2048 »

yellowapple wrote: post #62
minetest2048 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because their software, sat_id can only search Earth-orbiting satellites: > Payne noted that when the Tesla Roadster was originally launched in 2018, the community caught it and flagged it as an artificial object, and the MPC “correctly labeled it as such without assigning a minor planet designation.” But when subsequent observations were archived by the MPC and later identified by G., sat_id failed to locate the Roa…

> As the article mentioned, there is no such thing as space-track.org or celestrak.org where anyone can get trajectories for all deep space spacecraft. The closest thing we have is JPL Horizons, so they're working with them: That seems like something that's worth fixing as more and more artificial objects get launched into deep space.

This should be an international effort, not just US! They will censor out their spy satellites, even if its accidentally taken by a sky survey telescope: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/when-a-telescope-i...

Then other countries can use this as an excuse to not go public with their spacecraft ephemerides (US didn't tell the world about all of their spacecrafts, so why should I do that?)

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#65

Post by hinkley »

chomp wrote: post #56
rendaw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline says "delete" not "correct" or "replace". Blame clickbait.

Neither of your suggestions are accurate. The headline is accurate.

Given overwhelming recent experience, I highly doubt it. I think I didn’t have gray hair the last time a title was more accurate than the story.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#66

Post by elevatedastalt »

dgacmu wrote: post #29
galacticaactual wrote: post #14

[flagged]

There is almost nothing in the article that is "rocket man bad." The article is "lack of global coordination about man made objects in deep space bad." Which seems kinda like a reasonable and slightly boring complaint except that it's funny in this case because it was a drifting car.

There are signs

> At the time, it received a great deal of notoriety

No, it had received a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, or at best people said it was a gimmick / stunt. Where is the "notoriety" coming from?

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#67

Post by kanbara »

fastball wrote: post #59
perihelions wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I buy into the sensationalism behind this story. We're tracking billions[0] of asteroids in interplanetary space, and you say that it's a data-processing hazard that the half-dozen or so deep-space anthropogenic objects aren't submitted to a mandatory international database for de-confliction? That doesn't pass the smell test. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/01/1108643/vera-c-r...

Honestly "astronomers" have really started to annoy me, which surprises me because I love space and astronomy and star-gazing and such. I have bought multiple personal telescopes over the years, so I guess I even qualify as an amateur astronomer. But lately it seems I disagree with astronomers on any intersection of astronomy and politics. I put "astronomers" in quotes because of course I realize that "not all astron…

it’s cheaper and more permanent to just lay fibre and copper to provide internet. we don’t need 3000 satellites launched every few years to do so.

i think you’re overinflating elon’s importance. (not that he designs and builds starlink, anyway)

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#68

Post by lazide »

yellowapple wrote: post #62
minetest2048 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because their software, sat_id can only search Earth-orbiting satellites: > Payne noted that when the Tesla Roadster was originally launched in 2018, the community caught it and flagged it as an artificial object, and the MPC “correctly labeled it as such without assigning a minor planet designation.” But when subsequent observations were archived by the MPC and later identified by G., sat_id failed to locate the Roa…

> As the article mentioned, there is no such thing as space-track.org or celestrak.org where anyone can get trajectories for all deep space spacecraft. The closest thing we have is JPL Horizons, so they're working with them: That seems like something that's worth fixing as more and more artificial objects get launched into deep space.

Yeah, there have also been some other odd historical objects like [https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/how-a-long-gone-...]

In that case they figured out what it was when a spectrograph of the surface light showed it was - painted! Hah.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#69

Post by lazide »

tumnus wrote: post #61
LiamPowell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least 72 according to [1], which does not include upper stages from unmanned missions. You could likely query all of them that have been found from Horizons, but I don't know how to do so off the top of my head. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_in_...

72 out of around 128 million is about %0.005 which indeed does not seem like a lot.

Just enough to make it an irritating and bug prone edge case, you can never quite ignore, but never actually gets handled right for long.

Sounds about right.

Re: Astronomers delete asteroid because it turned out to be Tesla Roadster

#70

Post by GeoAtreides »

>After launch on the Falcon-Heavy rocket, it orbited Earth for six hours, until a third burn of the stage two inserted the Tesla Roadster into an interplanetary solar orbit reaching out toward the asteroid belt and having a perihelion of 0.99 AU and an aphelion of ~1.7 AU. This orbit will be stable for several million years.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...

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