The fact that a large asteroid will hit the earth is one of the end-time fears of mankind. The question now arises: can a celestial body be diverted from its course? This is what the “Dart” space probe is supposed to find out – by sacrificing itself.
There are primal catastrophes that justifiably serve the end-time fears of humans: nuclear war is part of them, climate change, and certainly also the impact of a large asteroid. While in the first two cases the threat comes directly from humans, at least in the long trajectories of the asteroids they have no hand in the game – at least until now.