Who Owns Tesla, SpaceX, X and Space?

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future."

Elon Musk, X, 12/17

"[Amateur Turkish astronomer used software he developed in his free time] to parse through the [Minor Planet Center's] public archive of observations of objects, which anyone can peruse in search of asteroids and other small solar system bodies."

Space publication Astronomy

"[The satellite appeared to re-enter] over the southern Wisconsin/Michigan area [and was] widely observed from neighbouring regions including Chicago."

"[Satellites at the end of their life-span use] electric thrusters to lower the orbit to about 250 [kilometres]. "Then it's switched off and the atmosphere drags them in over the next week or so."

Jonathan McDowell, scientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, seen here departing Earth with its Starman mannequin at the wheel, launched on a SpaceX rocket in 2018 and mistaken for a near-Earth asteroid in January 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

 

If you're the world's wealthiest individual, and you are galvanized by the prospect of space travel to the extent that you launch  your very own extraterrestrial plans for colonizing a planet in the galaxy in which your home planet exists -- an enterprise of extraordinary hubris in a challenge to the natural order of a magnitude that is difficult to imagine -- it must come easy to feel entitled in such a cavalier manner as to launch a personal toy into space just for the fun of it. 

 

Humanity's impulse to litter Earth, expands to the compulsion to litter space...

On January 2nd, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of a new asteroid named 2018 CN41. The announcement of a discovery that lasted one day only, before a correction was posted the following day to declare that the original announcement had been deleted. The explanation was that this was an erroneous classification of an asteroid; what the object actually was, it turned out, was a Tesla Roadster.

 

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)

The vehicle was in fact a fondly held possession of the founder of Space X, and the car, a red sports model, was favoured by the founder of Tesla, its proud manufacturer. In 2018 the car had been launched into orbit aboard SpaceX''s Falcon Heavy rocket, at the time considered the world's most powerful rocket. Can anyone name any other individual on Earth whose deep pockets could produce such fabled technology as an electric vehicle manufacturer and space rocketry duo, both used in a fantasy of the future? And then post it as a proudly amusing item on X, the social media platform he owns?

A SpaceX Starlink internet satellite fell from space in a blaze of glory overnight, lighting up the Midwest U.S. sky with a brilliant fireball, according to Space.com.

 

Elon Musk's little amusement is by no means the only object to make headlines connected to the world's wealthiest man with a penchant for oddball moves. What had been identified as a fireball streaking across the night sky on Wednesday for example. The object was in fact a Starlink internet satellite seen lighting up the sky as it streaked the sky over the American Midwest. The low-orbit launch of Starlink satellites for broadband internet are delivered skyward by SpaceX. 

 

The fireball appearance was posted in a video online by the American Meteor Society. Records have been maintained by the American Meteor Society of fireball reports since 2005. Dozens of reports along with videos and images were received by the Society this week from people who witnessed the satellite-cum-fireball, named Starlink 5693, that had been launched at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, February 2023.

The dramatic reentry of Starlink 5693 captured the attention of many, offering a glimpse of the growing interaction between technology and space. Science Magazine

"Spaceflight activities in cislunar and interplanetary space should be conducted in an open and transparent way."

"Such transparency is essential for promoting space situational awareness, reducing interference between missions, avoiding interference with observations of natural objects, including observations of potential hazardous asteroids, and ensuring the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies."

American Astronomical Society, 2004 statement