38628 Huya (/huːˈjɑː/ hoo-YAH; provisional designation 2000 EB₁₇₃) is a binary trans-Neptunian object located in the Kuiper belt, a region of icy objects orbiting beyond Neptune in the outer Solar System. Huya is classified as a plutino, a dynamical class of trans-Neptunian objects with orbits in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. It was discovered by the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team and was identified by Venezuelan astronomer Ignacio Ferrín in March 2000. It is named after Juyá, the mythological rain god of the Wayuu people native to South America.

Huya's surface is moderately red in color due to the presence of complex organic compounds on its surface. Water ice has been suspected to be also present on its surface, although it has not been directly detected on Huya. Huya is considered to be a mid-sized trans-Neptunian object, with an estimated diameter of about 400 km (250 mi).

Huya has one known natural satellite. The satellite is relatively large compared to Huya and is expected to have slowed its rotation, although measurements of Huya's brightness variations have indicated that Huya's rotation may not be synchronous with the satellite's orbit.

Huya was discovered on 10 March 2000 by a team of astronomers of the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team (QUEST), led by Gustavo Bruzual and Charles Baltay at the Llano del Hato National Astronomical Observatory in Mérida, Venezuela. Huya was first identified by Venezuelan astronomer Ignacio Ferrín during a computer-assisted search through images taken from a six-hour survey of deep-sky objects including quasars and supernovae, using the Llano del Hato National Astronomical Observatory's 1-meter Schmidt telescope on the night of 15 March 2000. At the time of discovery, Huya was located in the constellation of Virgo. The subtle movement of Huya was detected by the QUEST's computer program, which was designed to identify moving objects by superimposing multiple images. The discovery team subsequently analyzed earlier images taken from previous QUEST surveys conducted during the same month in order to verify the orbital motion of Huya.

The discovery of Huya was announced by the Minor Planet Center in a Minor Planet Electronic Circular on 3 June 2000. It was given the provisional designation 2000 EB₁₇₃ which indicates its year of discovery, with the first letter further specifying that the discovery took place in the first half of March. The last letter and numbers of its designation indicate that Huya is the 4327th object discovered in the first half of March. At that time, Huya was thought to be one of the largest minor planets in the Solar System due to its apparent magnitude of 20, which is relatively bright for a distant object. Astronomers speculated that Huya could be the second-largest minor planet discovered after Ceres, with a diameter around one-fourth the size of the then-planet Pluto. Baltay, leader of the discovery team and chairman of Yale University's Department of Physics, proclaimed that the discovery was significant because it was the largest object discovered in the Kuiper belt since Pluto in 1930. In an interview on their discovery, Baltay asserted:

The significance of this finding? It's just, Wow! After all these years, we can still find something new in our solar system. Some of it is luck. We looked in the right place. The other is the precision of our instrumentation.

After the announcement of Huya's discovery, the discovery team found precovery images of Huya taken with the Palomar Observatory's Samuel Oschin telescope on 9 April 1996. These precovery images of Huya from Palomar are the earliest known observations of Huya. The precovery images along with subsequent follow-up observations in 2000 extended Huya's observation arc up to four years, which helped refine Huya's orbit. By 2002, Huya was observed 303 times. This was sufficient to accurately determine its orbit, so it was assigned the minor planet number 38628 on 28 March 2002.

This minor planet is named after the mythological figure Huya (Juyá), the rain god of the Wayuu people indigenous to the Guajira Peninsula of northern Venezuela and Colombia. In Wayuu mythology, Juyá is a hunter who controlled the rain and was married to Pulowi, the female figure related to the wind and dry seasons. Juyá is also associated with the winter and lives in the celestial altitudes beyond the sun. The discovery team led by Ferrín particularly chose the name to represent Venezuela's indigenous peoples that lived in the region where Huya was discovered. Ferrín presumed that Huya had experienced multiple impact events during its formation, which he considered analogous to rain, a trait associated with Juyá.