Mombasa suburb on the mainland which contains a beach, oil refineries, housing estates etc. Moi International Airport and the Port Reitz District Hospital are in Port Reitz. Mombasa is also a county and divided into six constituencies and thirty wards. Mombasa is a major trade centre and home to Kenya's only large seaport, the Kilindini Harbour. "Kilindini" is an old Swahili term meaning "deep". The port is so-called because the channel is naturally very deep. Kilindini Harbor is an example of a natural geographic phenomenon called a ria, formed at the end of the last glacial period when the sea level
1428 Mombasa years prior to its official discovery at Johannesburg. American astronomer Robert Stephens obtained a rotational lightcurve of "Mombasa" in June 2012. Light-curve analysis gave a rotation period of 16.67 hours with a brightness variation of 0.16 magnitude (). Previous lightcurves were obtained by French amateur astronomer René Roy in February 2006 (17.6 hours, Δ0.15 mag; ), as well as by Scot Hawkins and Richard Ditteon at Oakley Observatory in May 2007 (17.12 hours, Δ0.25 mag; ). On the SMASS taxonomic scheme, "Mombasa" is a , an intermediate between the carbonaceous C and X-type, while it is also described as a