2020 HS₇ is a very small asteroid classified as a near-Earth object of the Earth-crossing Apollo group. When it was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 2 survey on 27 April 2020, the asteroid was initially calculated to have a 10% chance of impact with Earth before being ruled out by improved orbit determinations from additional observations.^[6] Although there is now no risk of impact with Earth, it did make a close approach 42,700 kilometres (26,500 mi) from Earth on 28 April 2020, with a flyby speed of 15.6 kilometres per second (9.7 mi/s) relative to Earth.^[3][7][5] The asteroid will not make any close encounters within 1 lunar distance (380,000 km; 240,000 mi) of Earth in the next 100 years.^[3]

Observations by Kiso Observatory in Nagano, Japan show that the asteroid rotates extremely rapidly with a rotation period of 3 seconds, making it the fastest-rotating asteroid known as of 2022^[update].^[4] No other near-Earth asteroid of similar size is known to have a rotation period shorter than 10 seconds, which could be attributed to the tangential component of the YORP effect accelerating their rotation far beyond this period.^[4] The asteroid exhibits a very small light curve amplitude of 0.07 magnitudes, which either implies a nearly spherical shape or a pole-on rotation during observations.^[4]