Imagining a sci-fi story where an alien probe drops by and orbits Earth several times only to then hurl itself towards the Sun.

We manage to capture and retrieve it but our dissection of it unleashes a xeno-plague upon our planet.

Only later do we realize that the probe attempted its kamikaze maneuver because it had, upon arrival, detected life in our solar system and had intended to protect us from its own terraforming payload.