It was discovered on 8 February 1984, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona.
[11] Houston is an assumed S-type asteroid, in line with the Flora family's overall spectral type.
[3][12]: 23 In April 2011, a rotational lightcurve of Houston was obtained from photometric observations by astronomers at the Oakley Southern Sky Observatory (E09) in Australia.
Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 11.218 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.11 magnitude (U=3).
[3] This minor planet was named after Walter Scott Houston (1912–1993), an American amateur astronomer best known for his column "Deep-Sky Wonders" in the Sky and Telescope magazine.