SOMETIMES it is enjoyable, and I think necessary, to take a break from the news that feels comprehensively discouraging, and marvel at what humans can do when we're not applying our knowledge and skills to robbing and killing each other.

Ten months ago, NASA launched a spacecraft on a course to intercept a pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 7 million miles (11.2 million kilometers) from Earth. On Tuesday, the space probe, which was about the size of a compact car, crashed into the smaller of the two asteroids at a speed of about 22,500 kilometers per hour, much to the delight of the mission team monitoring the probe from Earth and space enthusiasts (or as my daughter correctly put it, nerds) watching around the world.