The asteroid was discovered on 4 June 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona,[3] and named after planetary scientist Steven J. Ostro at JPL.

[2] Ostro is a member of the Hungaria family, which form the innermost dense concentration of asteroids in the Solar System.

[5] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.5152 and a diameter of 5.27 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.73.

Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 6.503 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.79 magnitude (U=3).

[6] This minor planet was named after American planetary scientist Steven J. Ostro at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.