depends on the destination / trajectory of the object. This object has almost zero chance of ever hitting anything, so it doesn't have to go through the super crazy sanitizing that the Curiosity rover did.
That was probably true of the original trajectory, but now it's supposed to fly quite close to Ceres and scientists want updated data to see if a collision is likely.
“Quite close” is relative, given how ridiculously vast space is. The chances that they fire blindly out into space and just happen to hit Ceres seems so unlikely as to be basically impossible.
Nonetheless people are asking SpaceX for data to calculate the probability because they seem to think it's higher than 0 because of the unplanned trajectory.
The pale blue dot image gives some sense of scale here. Is it in the orbital plane of Ceres? I too would be interested in seeing the data results. If it's not orbiting on same plane then risks of collision drops further it would seem - would involve a plane intersection at the exact distance from sun Ceres orbit is at same time Ceres is there.
