This minor planet was numbered by the Minor Planet Center on 10 September 2003. It was named from Mohegan legend, after Moshup, a giant who lived in the coastal areas of New England. The asteroid's companion is named Squannit, after the wife of Moshup and a medicine woman of the Makiawisug (little people). The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (M.P.C. 115894).[9]
Moshup has a minor-planet moon orbiting it. The moon, named Squannit/ˈskwɒnɪt/ and designated S/2001 (66391) 1, is approximately 360 metres in diameter, and orbits its primary every 16 hours at a mean distance of 2.6 kilometers. The presence of a companion was suggested by photometric observations made by Pravec and Šarounová and was confirmed by radar observations from Arecibo, announced on 23 May 2001 (also see below).[5][10] Based on radar imaging, Squannit's dimensions are estimated to be 595 × 450 × 343 meters.[4]
The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts a diameter of 1.3 kilometers and derives an albedo 0.26 with an absolute magnitude of 16.5.[6]
The shapes of the two bodies and their dynamics are complex.[11] With a dimension of approximately 1.42 × 1.36 × 1.18 kilometers for a simple triaxial ellipsoid, the asteroid has an oblate shape, which is dominated by an equatorial ridge at the body's potential-energy minimum. This bizarre property of the equatorial region means that it is close to breakup: raising a particle a meter above the surface would put it into orbit. As seen in the image above, the gravitational effects between the moon and the asteroid create a gigantic mountain extending in the equatorial plane around the entire asteroid. It was the first asteroid to be described as "muffin-shaped",[12] which is now understood to be a very common shape for asteroids in critical rotation,[13] including 101955 Bennu and 162173 Ryugu.