[1] It was named for Soviet flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko who was killed during an airline hijacking in 1970.
[12] In the SMASS classification, Kurchenko is an Xc-subtype that transitions between the X-type and the carbonaceous C-type asteroids.
[4] In April 2010, a rotational lightcurve of Kurchenko was obtained from photometric observations the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in California.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 8.622 hours with a low brightness amplitude of 0.06 magnitude, indicative for a spherical shape (U=2).
The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 February 1982 (M.P.C.