An Amor asteroid, it orbits between Earth and Mars.

It is an X-type asteroid, so its surface composition is yet unknown.

It was discovered by Eleanor F. Helin and Jeff T. Alu at Palomar Observatory on 29 June 1989.

1989 ML was considered as a target of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa (then Muses-C) but had to be given up due to technical reasons.

It was also considered by the European Space Agency as a candidate target for the Don Quijote mission to study the effects of impacting a spacecraft into an asteroid; however, they too changed to other targets.