It was discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope (WISE) on 17 September 2010.

[1][2] The orbit was described by Apostolos Christou and David Asher at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.

[1] Observations by the discovering WISE telescope give a diameter of 357 meters and an albedo of 0.084.

[5] In its ~350 yr horseshoe cycle, it never approaches Earth more closely than about 0.15 AU, alternately trailing and leading.

[5] A precovery of 2010 SO16 may have been located in a 2005 Spitzer Space Telescope image.