Asteroid 2023 LP1 passed by the Earth distance of about 255 900 km (67% of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon or 0.17% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), with a velocity of about 13.40 km per second, slightly before 1.40 am GMT on Tuesday 13 June 2023. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. 2023 LP1 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 2-7 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 2-7 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to explode in an airburst (an explosion caused by superheating from friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is greater than that caused by simply falling, due to the orbital momentum of the asteroid) more than 36 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.
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2023 LB1 was discovered on 14 June 2023 (the day after its closest approach to the Earth) by the University of Arizona's Mt. Lemmon Survey at the Steward Observatory on Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. The designation 2023 LB1 implies that the asteroid was the 27th object (asteroid B1 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Z, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 26, A2 = 51, etc., which means that B1 = (25 x 1) + 2 = 27) discovered in the firs half of June 2023 (period 2023 L - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded).
2023 LB is calculated to have a 427 day (1.17 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 13.0° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.68 AU from the Sun (68% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) and out to 1.54 AU (1.54 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, or slightly more than the distance at which the planet Mars orbits). It is therefore classed as an Apollo Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than the Earth, but which does get closer).
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This means that 2023 LB1 has occasional close encounters with the Earth, with the last having happened in December 2021, and the next predicted for November 2027. The asteroid also has regular close encounters with the planet Venus, with the last having happened in June 2022, and the next predicted for January 2041.
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