Fur trade Russia exported raw furs, consisting in most cases of the pelts of martens, beavers, wolves, foxes, squirrels and hares. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Russians began to settle in Siberia, a region rich in many mammal fur species, such as Arctic fox, lynx, sable, sea otter and stoat (ermine). In a search for the prized sea otter pelts, first used in China, and later for the northern fur seal, the Russian Empire expanded into North America, notably Alaska. From the 17th through the second half of the 19th century, Russia was the world's largest supplier of fur. The fur
5026 Martes 0.24 and an inclination of 4° with respect to the ecliptic. A first precovery was taken at Palomar Observatory in 1953, extending the body's observation arc by 34 years prior to its official discovery observation at Klet. "Martes" has been characterized as a carbonaceous C-type asteroid by PanSTARRS photometric survey. "Martes" forms an asteroid pair with , and was part of the 35 sample asteroid pairs in Petr Pravec's study "Formation of asteroid pairs by rotational fission", published in the journal "Nature". Between 2008 and 2010, several rotational lightcurves of "Martes" were obtained from photometric observations. Lightcurve analysis gave a