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We report a statistically significant detection of nongravitationalacceleration on the sub-kilometer near-Earth asteroid (523599) 2003 RM. Due toits orbit, 2003 RM experiences favorable observing apparitions every 5 years.Thus, since its discovery, 2003 RM has been extensively tracked withground-based optical facilities in 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2018. We find that theobserved plane-of-sky positions cannot be explained with a purelygravity-driven trajectory. Including a transverse nongravitational accelerationallows us to match all observational data, but its magnitude is inconsistentwith perturbations typical of asteroids such as the Yarkovsky effect or solarradiation pressure. After ruling out that the orbital deviations are due to aclose approach or collision with another asteroid, we hypothesize that thisanomalous acceleration is caused by unseen cometary outgassing. A detailedsearch for evidence of cometary activity with archival and deep observationsfrom Pan-STARRS and the VLT does not reveal any detectable dust production.However, the best-fitting H$_2$O sublimation model allows for brightening dueto activity consistent with the scatter of the data. We estimate the productionrate required for H$_2$O outgassing to power the acceleration, and find that,assuming a diameter of 300 m, 2003 RM would require Q(H$_2$O)$\sim10^{23}$molec s$^{-1}$ at perihelion. We investigate the recent dynamical history of2003 RM and find that the object most likely originated in the mid-to-outermain belt ($\sim86\%$) as opposed to from the Jupiter-family comet region($\sim11\%$). Further observations, especially in the infrared, could shedlight on the nature of this anomalous acceleration.

(523599) 2003 RM: The asteroid that wanted to be a comet