https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shrapnel-that-killed-the-dinosaurs/

It must have been amazing sight 66 million years ago for the dinosaurs to look up and see a giant rock, of order the length of Manhattan (7–50 miles in diameter), getting bigger and bigger in the sky. But the fun would have stopped when the rock hit the ground and blasted out the enormous Chicxulub crater, 93 miles in diameter, off the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The human species did not exist back then and might not have existed today if not for the mass extinction that resulted from this impact.

But there is hope that a similar extinction event will not repeat in our future, because science can shield us from catastrophes. If the dinosaurs had had telescopes, they could have identified the approaching rock and perhaps deflected it to miss the Earth. In principle, astronomy can save lives.