It was discovered on 2 October 1989, by American astronomer Schelte Bus at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
[9] On 29 November 2021, IAU's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature named it from Greek mythology after Trojan warrior Mulius, who was killed during the Trojan War by Achilles who drove his javelin through one ear and out the other of Mulius' head.
Four nights of photometric observations of this asteroid were used to build a lightcurve showing a rotation period of 5.780±0.001 hours with a brightness variation of 0.30 magnitude.
The well-defined lightcurve was obtained during February 1994 by Stefano Mottola and Anders Erikson using the ESO 1-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile (U=3).
[7][8] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid measures 35.1 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.099,[6] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for a carbonaceous asteroid of 0.057 and calculates a larger diameter of 42.2 kilometers.