Alarm about the threat started to spread to the public. Then, on December 26, 2004, a real catastrophe struck: the Indian Ocean tsunami,which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The public forgot about Apophis. Meanwhile, astronomersa had found earlier images of the asteroid. The cxtra data enabled the scientists to calculate its orbit, and they discovered that it would actually fly safely by Earth in 2029. However, this alarming scenario started a race among scientists to find solutions to the threat of large objects striking Earth.