You can exhale now. The near-Earth asteroid Apophis has even less of a chance of hitting Earth than before, NASA has announced. The new calculations lower the chances of doomsday, for a 2036 close approach, by a factor of five for the 270-metre asteroid: from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000. The calculations were based on observations from a Hawaiian telescope and were announced at a conference in Puerto Rico — the location of that famous asteroid super-spotter, the Arecibo radio telescope, which also factored into the new probability estimate.

Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Though that has been ruled out, the asteroid will still swing closer than some Earth-orbiting satellites, and that whip-around may end up altering its course. That’s why the Planetary Society sponsored a contest to a design a small tracking spacecraft which would allow more precise measurements of its path.

Image: UH/IA