Imagine...It COULD happen...

 Asteroids could hit our precious Earth!

 See our Speak Up recommendation related to this story: Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Upon further review, a big scary-sounding asteroid is no longer even a remote threat to smash into Earth in about 20 years, NASA says.

Astronomers got a much better look at the asteroid when it whizzed by Earth on Wednesday from a relative safe 9 million miles away. They recalculated the space rock's trajectory and determined it wasn't on a path to hit Earth on April 13, 2036...

  as once feared possible.

At more than 1,060 feet wide, the rock called Apophis could do tons of damage to a local area if it hit and could even cause a tsunami...

but not large enough to trigger worldwide extinctions.

About 9 years ago, when astronomers first saw Apophis (uh-PAH'-fihs), they thought there was a 2.7 % chance that it would smack into our planet. Later, they lowered the chances to an even more unlikely 1 in 250,000.

Now it's never mind. 

It won't get closer than 19,400 miles. That's still the closest approach asteroid watchers have seen for a rock this large.

If you want to see a space rock come cosmically close to Earth, there's always next month.

On Feb. 15, a small asteroid, only 130-feet wide, will come close to Earth, about 17,000 miles above the equator. That's so close it will come between our planet and some of the more distant satellites that circle the globe. 

 But it will miss Earth.