(36256) 1999 XT17
asteroid
(36256) 1999 XT17 is an unnamed asteroid located in the main asteroid belt. Discovered on 3 December 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, it was initially observed as a lost asteroid in 1979. Around 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in size, it is the parent body of a small and unusual asteroid family. Many members of this asteroid family, including 1999 XT17, are olivine-rich asteroids, suggesting that they may have originated from the mantle of a destroyed planetesimal.
Discovery
1999 XT17 was first observed by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on 16 October 1979 and was assigned the provisional designation 1979 UU3 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). It was observed by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory again on 11 November of that year; believed to be a different object, it was assigned a second provisional designation, 1979 VH. It subsequently became a lost asteroid. It was briefly observed by Klet Observatory in October 1989, but was not identified as the object observed at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory a decade earlier. The asteroid was observed again in late 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, located at the Experimental Test Site (ETS) in Socorro, New Mexico, United States. 3 December 1999 is marked as the official discovery date of the asteroid, and it was given its primary provisional designation 1999 XT17.
Once 1999 XT17's orbit was sufficiently determined, it was assigned the number (36256) by the MPC on 27 February 2002.
The public source identifies “(36256) 1999 XT17” as asteroid. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around XT17 and asteroid.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7452861. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 1979, 1989 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “(36256) 1999 XT17” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.