4587 Rees, provisional designation 3239 T-2, is a Mars-crosser and former near-Earth object on an eccentric orbit from the asteroid belt, approximately 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in diameter.
It was discovered during the second Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey on 30 September 1973, by Dutch astronomer couple Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden, and Tom Gehrels at the Palomar Observatory in California.
[1] Rees is a Mars-crossing asteroid, a dynamically unstable group between the main belt and the near-Earth populations, crossing the orbit of Mars at 1.66 AU.
[10] Asteroid 4587 is mentioned in Arthur C. Clarke's 1975 (so not then yet named Rees) novel Imperial Earth as the site of a black hole factory where the singularity used in the Asymptotic Drive to power the spaceship Sirius featured in the book is manufactured.
Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 7.879±0.002 hours with a brightness variation of 0.55 magnitude (U=3), indicative of an elongated, non-spheroidal shape.