Re: New asteroid discovered with a less than one AU orbit
"And thanks to its orbit, which is inclined 25 degrees from the ecliptic"
The above quote answers your question. No, this could not be an old space probe as we did not launch inner solar system probes out of the ecliptic. Takes too much delta V and doesn't go where we want (Mercury, Venus). The major out of ecliptic mission was Ulysses which used Jupiter's mass to modify its trajectory to get an out of the ecliptic pass over the Sun's poles.