| Minorplanet: | yes |
| 7336 Saunders | |
| Background: |
|
| Discovery Ref: |   |
| Discovered: | 6 September 1989 |
| Mpc Name: | (7336) Saunders |
| Named After: | R. Stephen Saunders |
| Mp Category: | NEOAmor  |
| Orbit Ref: |   |
| Epoch: | 4 September 2017 (JD 2458000.5) |
| Uncertainty: | 0 |
| Observation Arc: | 34.63 yr (12,647 days) |
| Perihelion: | 1.1956 AU |
| Semimajor: | 2.3052 AU |
| Eccentricity: | 0.4813 |
| Period: | 3.50 yr (1,278 days) |
| Mean Motion: | / day |
| Inclination: | 7.1958° |
| Asc Node: | 174.49° |
| Arg Peri: | 181.51° |
| Dimensions: | 0.467 km |
| Rotation: | h h |
| Albedo: | 0.20 |
| Spectral Type: | SMASS = Sq S  |
| Abs Magnitude: | 18.0 18.8 |
7336 Saunders, provisional designation, is a stony asteroid and near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 0.5 kilometers in diameter.
The asteroid was discovered on 6 September 1989, by American astronomer Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in California, United States. It was named for JPL-project scientist R. Stephen Saunders.
Saunders 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.
A first precovery was taken at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory in 1982, extending the body's observation arc by 7 years prior to its official discovery at Palomar. It has a minimum orbital intersection distance with Earth of 0.1908AU, which corresponds to 74.3 lunar distances.
In the SMASS classification, Saunders is a Sq-type, which transitions from the common S-type to the Q-type asteroids. 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 of Saunders 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 . Another rotational lightcurve was obtained by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory in August 2003, giving a period of and an amplitude of 0.2 magnitude .
This minor planet was named in honor of JPL-project scientist R. Stephen Saunders (born 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. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 26 July 2000 .