Asteroid flyby ... asteroid originally designated ZLAF9B2 – now called 2018 LA

[ilan]

Small asteroid zipped through Earth’s atmosphere Saturday
Eddie Irizarry in EARTH | SPACE | June 3, 2018

The IAU has confirmed that the asteroid originally designated ZLAF9B2 – now called 2018 LA – disintegrated at a height of 30 miles (50 km) over South Africa on Saturday.

The International Astronomical Union has now confirmed that a small asteroid – discovered Saturday morning, June 2, 2018 – entered Earth’s atmosphere later that day. The asteroid was originally designated ZLAF9B2 and is now officially called 2018 LA. It surprised astronomers shortly after its discovery, when its trajectory suggested it would pass very, very close to Earth just hours later. The IAU confirmed:

The object reached 50-km [30-mile] height above the Earth’s surface around 16:51 UTC over southern Africa.

There are reports of sightings of a bright meteor, and a couple of video likely related to the event. The first video, above, is from Barend Swanepoel in South Africa. He reported the video as being:…

taken near my dad’s farm between Ottosdal and Hartbeesfontein.

A witness in South Africa described the meteor as very bright, and showing a yellow color.

This space rock had an estimated size of only 10-16 feet (3 to 5 meters) in diameter. If it struck (and sometimes they do, and meteorite pieces are found), it was too small to cause serious damages. In contrast, the impressive meteor seen over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February, 2013 was an estimated 60 feet wide (20 meters). It broke windows in six Russian cities and caused more than 1,500 people to seek medical attention, mostly due to injuries from flying glass. The June 2 asteroid wasn’t big enough to do anything like that, but it was big enough to produce a spectacular, very bright meteor.