| Minorplanet: | yes |
| 1956 Artek | |
| Background: |
|
| Discovered: | 8 October 1969 |
| Mpc Name: | (1956) Artek |
| Named After: | Artek (Арте́к) |
| Epoch: | 4 September 2017 (JD 2458000.5) |
| Uncertainty: | 0 |
| Observation Arc: | 63.16 yr (23,069 days) |
| Perihelion: | 2.8760 AU |
| Semimajor: | 3.2032 AU |
| Eccentricity: | 0.1022 |
| Period: | 5.73 yr (2,094 days) |
| Mean Motion: | / day |
| Inclination: | 1.4928° |
| Asc Node: | 153.36° |
| Arg Peri: | 346.60° |
| Dimensions: | km 18.71 km km |
| Albedo: | 0.08 |
| Abs Magnitude: | 11.9011.9512.1 |
1956 Artek, provisional designation, is a dark Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 19 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 8 October 1969, by Soviet–Russian astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnyj. It was named after Artek, a Soviet Young Pioneer camp.
Artek is a dark C-type asteroid and a member of the Themis family, a dynamical family of outer-belt asteroids with nearly coplanar ecliptical orbits. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.9–3.5 AU once every 5 years and 9 months (2,094 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.10 and an inclination of 1° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at Goethe Link Observatory in 1954, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 15 years prior to its discovery.
A rotational lightcurve was obtained from photometric observations made by Italian astronomers Roberto Crippa and Federico Manzini in February 2006. The fragmentary lightcurve gave a rotation period of hours with a low brightness variation of 0.07 magnitude .
According to the space-based surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid measures 18.0 and 19.2 kilometers in diameter with a corresponding albedo of 0.099 of 0.074, respectively. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.08 and calculates a diameter of 18.7 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.1.
This minor planet was named after the Soviet Artek (Арте́к) camp, the first All-Union Young Pioneer camp on the Crimean peninsula. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 30 June 1977 .