Elenin an "ex-comet," one that should soon be forgotten.

Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif gave this assessment of Comet Elenin which became an internet sensation when it was tagged as a "doomsday" comet that would bring disaster to Earth.

According to Yeomans. Elenin did as new comets passing close by the sun do about two percent of the time: it broke apart and its remains will not be back for 12,000 years.

"Elenin's remnants will also act as other broken-up comets act. They will trail along in a debris cloud that will follow a well-understood path out of the inner solar system. After that, we won't see the scraps of comet Elenin around these parts for almost 12 millennia," Yeomans added.

Last Sept. 10, comet Elenin came within 45 million miles (75 million kilometers) of the sun and broke apart into pieces. In October, when the comet came within 22 million miles (35.4 million km) of Earth, its closest to our planet, only a cloud of debris was visible in telescopes.

A NASA photo taken of Elenin on Oct. 14, just days before it reached its nearest point to Earth, revealed nothing but a stray meteor and a distant spiral galaxy.

"Comets are made up of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds and can be several miles in diameter, but they are fragile and loosely held together like dust balls. So it doesn't take much to get a comet to disintegrate, and with comets, once they break up, there is no hope of reconciliation," Yeomans said.

Comet Elenin was named after its discoverer, astronomer Leonid Elenin of Lyubertsy, Russia. The comet, also known as C/2010 X1, was about 1.2 miles (2 km) wide when it was still in one piece.