7336 Saunders

7336 Saunders, provisional designation 1989 RS₁, is a stony asteroid classified as near-Earth object of the Amor group of asteroids, approximately 0.5 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 6 September 1989, by American astronomer Eleanor Helin at the U.S. Palomar Observatory in California.

The S-type asteroid is classified as a Sq-type in the SMASS taxonomy. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.2–3.4 AU once every 3 years and 6 months (1,278 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.48 and an inclination of 7° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory in 1982, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 7 years prior to its discovery. It has a minimum orbital intersection distance with Earth of 0.1915 AU (28,600,000 km).

The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a diameter of 467 meters, based on an absolute magnitude of 19.02. In October 1989, the first photometric observations for this asteroid were made with the ESO 1-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile. It gave a rotation period of 6 hours with a brightness variation of 0.3 magnitude (U=2). Another rotational light-curve was obtained by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory in August 2003, giving a period of 7000642300000000000♠6.423±0.004 and an amplitude of 0.2 magnitude (U=n.a.).

The minor planet was named in honor of JPL-project scientist R. Stephen Saunders (b. 1940), director of the RPIF and head scientist of the Solar System Exploration Office. He worked on the Mars Surveyor 2001/03 program and on the Magellan spacecraft, that visited and mapped Venus in 1990. Naming citation was published on 26 July 2000 (M.P.C. 41028).