At one point, Asteroid 2024 YR4 had a one percent chance of hitting the Earth in December 2032. And then those chances got bigger and then bigger and bigger again. It seemed like we were on the march toward inevitability when, suddenly, the odds started downshifting.

The odds have decreased yet again, and so significantly that we are now near a zero percent chance of getting whacked by some space junk.

Just days ago there was a 3.1 percent chance that a “city killer” asteroid would pummel the Earth. Things were starting to get a little tense even though there was still a much, much greater chance that it would bypass us completely. But the number kept going up, which was a little disconcerting.

Now, just a few days after the odds reached a new all-time high, they’ve plummeted to near zero. If you want to get all specific about it, NASA’s JPL Center for Near-Earth Objects Studies now says that 2024 YR4 has a 0.005 percent chance of hitting the Earth, which means that for every 20,000 simulations ran, the asteroid hits the Earth one time.

Space is a wild, unpredictable place, so who’s to say what happens next, but it sure seems like we’re in the clear.

On the Torino scale, which measures the hazardous threat posed by space objects, the asteroid is now well within “No Hazard” territory. The rock that once seemed destined to level part of the Earth will now just be another speck on the horizon.

That’s not to say the concern was unwarranted or of no benefit. We must remain vigilant against the threat of space rocks with ill intent. We’ve developed some rudimentary ways of solving that problem, like how NASA once threw a similar asteroid off of its trajectory by slamming a satellite into it, but other than that, our ideas about how to handle an oncoming asteroid remain theoretical.

At least the appearance of asteroid 2024 YR4 got international space agencies working together and exchanging ideas on how to best fend off a more credible cosmic threat that arises in the future.