[2] It is a member of the Aten asteroid, a subgroup of near-Earth objects that are located in the zone of influence of Venus.
It has frequent, relatively close encounters with the Earth, as its minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) is 0.16 AU or about 23 million kilometers.
This means that it is close enough to Venus for the planet to capture 1989 VA into a co-orbital relationship.
The combination of a small semi-major axis and high eccentricity made 1989 VA the first Aten asteroid discovered to get closer to the Sun (0.295 AU) than Mercury ever does.
1989 VA's eccentric orbit takes it out past the Earth, where it has encounters of about 0.15 to 0.20 AU about every 3 to 5 years around October–November.
In the SMASS taxonomy, 1989 VA is characterized as a Sq-subtype that fall into the broader class of stony S-type asteroids.