A 100ft asteroid has blasted past the Earth without incident - but will return next year.
Asteroid 2013 TX68's closest approach was 2.5 million miles away, nowhere near as close as the 15,000 miles some astronomers had estimated.
But the space rock will be making a return visit in 2017, and there are odds of 250 million to one that it could hit Earth.
The space rock was spotted three years ago by astronomers in the US that monitor the skies for potentially threatening near-Earth objects.
The whale-sized asteroid was given the nickname B2Bomber, and NASA was forced to issue a statement to worried members of the public that it posed no threat.
It is estimated that only a tiny fraction of large near-Earth objects have been detected.
Anything larger than 30-metres is large enough to cause major damage to a big city.
The last major hit on Earth happened in 2013 when a 65ft-wide rock exploded in the skies over Russia.
The resulting shock wave shattered windows and caused minor injuries around the city of Chelyabinsk.
It landed in a lake several miles outside of the town.
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