A $344 million spacecraft is likely to come to an Armageddon-inspired end, nearly 10 months after it departed Earth.

IT reported that in order to test a novel defence device, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission purposefully collided with an asteroid.

For the purpose of testing a kinetic impactor technology that might one day be employed to protect Earth from an impending asteroid, NASA is smashing the probe into the binary asteroid system Didymos.

At a speed of 24,000 kilometres per hour, the spacecraft collided with the moonlet Deimorpos of the Didymos asteroid system, slightly altering its orbit.

This will show that, if a killer asteroid ever comes our way, we would have a fighting chance of deflecting it. The impact should be just enough to move the asteroid into a slightly tighter orbit around its companion space rock.