After a recalculation pertaining to the trajectory of the massive Apophis asteroid, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge have downgraded the asteroid’s chances of banging into the Earth to four-in-a-million from the earlier one-in-45,000.

The scientists’ previous probability was related to the odds of the 200-yard long Apophis asteroid, which is nearly two-and-a-half football fields in size, hitting the Earth on April 13, 2036, thereby indicating the doomsday!

In fact, at first Apophis was considered to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting the Earth in 2029 – a possibility that was ruled out after additional observations of the asteroid.

The latest recalculation of Apophis’ trajectory was undertaken by scientists at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy in Manoa, with the help of an 88-inch telescope, located near the summit of Mauna Kea.

Noting that modernized computational methods and newly-available data have considerably slimmed down the 2036 possibility too, Steve Chesley, an astronomer with JPL’s Near-Earth Object office, said: “We've all but ruled out” an Earth-Apophis collision in 2036. the Near Earth-Object Observations Program or “Spaceguard” helps NASA track asteroids and comets passing close to Earth.

The updated findings will be presented by Chesley, along with his colleague Paul Chodas, at this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico.