The asteroid was discovered on 20 November 2007 by Andrea Boattini of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey on Mount Lemmon, near Tucson, Arizona, United States, using a 1.5-meter telescope. It was discovered in the constellation Taurus at an apparent magnitude of +20. This is about 400,000 times fainter than most people can see with the naked eye on a dark night far from city lights. It was discovered nineteen days after passing near the Earth. By the time it arrived at Mars it had an apparent magnitude of roughly +26 and therefore appeared over 100 times fainter than at the time of discovery.