It was discovered on 2 March 1981, by American astronomer Schelte Bus at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
[1] Roddenberry is an assumed stony S-type asteroid, typical for core members of the Nysa family and in agreement with its high albedo (see below).
[3] In the 1990s, a fragmentary rotational lightcurve of Roddenberry was obtained from photometric observations by Richard Binzel.
Lightcurve analysis gave a highly uncertain rotation period of 12 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.14 magnitude (U=1).
[3][7] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Roddenberry measures 3.622 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.193,[5][6] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20, and derives a diameter of 3.56 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 14.61.