The asteroid was discovered on 5 January 1989, by Japanese astronomer Takuo Kojima at the YGCO Chiyoda Station, Japan.
It orbits the Sun in the outer asteroid belt at a distance of 2.3–3.9 AU once every 5 years and 6 months (2,004 days).
[7] This minor planet was named after JPL-scientist Alex Konopliv (born 1960), an internationally recognized authority on the measurement of the gravitational field of Solar System bodies tracked by satellites in Earth's orbit.
[8] In December 2010, a rotational lightcurve of Alexkonopliv was obtained from photometric observation at the Palomar Transient Factory in California.
[5] According to the survey carried out by NASA's space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Alexkonopliv measures 10.3 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.116,[4] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for carbonaceous asteroids of 0.057 and calculates a diameter of 11.5 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 13.43.