The asteroid was discovered on 24 February 1938, by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at Turku Observatory in Southwest Finland.
[7] In January 2009, a provisional and fragmentary photometric lightcurve of Aavasaksa was obtained at the Via Capote Observatory in California.
Lightcurve analysis gave it a longer than average rotation period of 24 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.4 in magnitude (U=1).
[6] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Aavasaksa measures 8.4 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.28,[4] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.24, derived from 8 Flora, the Flora family's largest member and namesake, and calculates a diameter of 8.2 kilometers.
[3] This minor planet is named after Aavasaksa, a sharp-edged hill in Finnish Lapland, just south of the Arctic Circle.