NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at Saturn nears finale

Linda Spilker, a Scientist on the Cassini Project told the press members on September 13, Wednesday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, that, “We’ve had an incredible 13-year mission”.

Following its death, Nasa tweeted: “Every time we see Saturn in the night sky, we’ll remember”. So the team chose to bring Cassini closer to Saturn than ever before to do some final science, before sending the probe into the planet to meet its fiery end. They, therefore, maneuvered the probe to perform its merry-go-round flight through the planet’s rings since its momentum and Saturn’s gravity would keep Cassini moving despite almost running out of propellant. Instead of keeping the mission going and potentially colliding with one of Saturn’s moons, which have the potential ingredients for life, the option to conduct a controlled crash was preferred. En route, it has made multiple close approaches to the planet itself, travelling within the innermost of its rings, and sending back detailed images of the atmosphere. That’s when radio signals from the spacecraft – its last scientific gifts to Earth – came to an abrupt halt. This has been an incredible mission. you’re all an incredible team’.

“But we recognize that it is important to bring the mission to an end in a tidy and controlled manner”. This will help keep its antenna pointed at Earth so Mission Control can collect as much data as possible.

The circle shows where NASA believes Cassini burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere.

Even in its final months, Cassini got to collect some of its juiciest data.

In particular, the spacecraft’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) will be directly sampling the atmosphere’s composition, which can not be done from orbit. It will take just a few minutes for it to be completely destroyed. The predicted altitude for loss of signal is approximately 1,500 kilometers above Saturn’s cloud tops. From that point, the spacecraft will begin to burn up like a meteor.

In April 2017, Cassini embarked on a final programme of 22 orbits of Saturn, each taking about six and half days to complete.

“The spacecraft’s final signal will be like an echo”.

Today, spacecraft Cassini will make its final approach to the giant planet Saturn. It has sent back more than 450,000 images, and for quite some time these will be the last close-up images of Saturn we will have until another mission returns to the ringed planet.

Any photos?: Yes. NASA released a batch of images that Cassini took on the final day of its journey.

Cassini departed Earth in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute The Cassini space probe took this image of geysers on the Saturn moon Enceladus shooting 50 miles into space.