2 Pallas [SEP] named after
used to estimate the mass of Pallas from the tiny perturbations induced by it onto the motion of Mars.
The "Dawn" team was granted viewing time on the Hubble Space Telescope in September 2007 for a once-in-twenty-year opportunity to view Pallas at closest approach, to obtain comparative data for Ceres and Vesta.
History Naming.
2 Pallas is named after Pallas Athena (Ancient Greek: ), an alternate name for the goddess Athena.
In some mythologies Athena killed Pallas, then adopted her
analysis by Nesvorný, "Celestia" is a member of the Pallas family (), a small asteroid family of less than 200 known members with inclined orbits. The family is named after 2 Pallas. However, in a HCM-analysis by Milani and Knežević, "Celestia" belongs to the background population.
The asteroid orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.1–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 5 months (1,615 days; semi-major axis of 2.69 AU)