2072 Kosmodemyanskaya, provisional designation 1973 QE2, is a stony asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 6 kilometers in diameter.
Kosmodemyanskaya orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 2.1–2.9 AU once every 3 years and 10 months (1,402 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.16 and an inclination of 5° with respect to the ecliptic.[1]
The asteroid was first identified as 1944 BD at Turku Observatory in 1944. Its first used observation is a precovery taken at Palomar Observatory in 1956, extending the body's observation arc by 17 years prior to the official discovery observation at Nauchnyj.[9]
The first rotational lightcurve was obtained by American astronomer Richard P. Binzel during a photometric survey of small main-belt asteroids in the 1980s. It showed a rotation period of 4.4 hours with a brightness variation of 0.09 magnitude (U=2).[6] In November 2004, another lightcurve of Kosmodemyanskaya was obtained by French amateur astronomer Laurent Bernasconi. Lightcurve analysis gave a period of 10 hours with an amplitude of 0.05 magnitude (U=2-).[7]
Diameter and albedo
According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Kosmodemyanskaya measures 4.843 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an exceptionally high albedo of 0.522,[4][5] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 8.93 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.61.[3]