Cassini Spacecraft Plunged into Saturn's Atmosphere and Crashed Ending its 20 Year Mission.

 Artistic Illustration of Cassini's Plunge into Saturn's Atmosphere - Grand Finale - NASA at Saturn

Cassini was finally running out of fuel in 2017. In two decades of its space exploration from 1997-2017, it has shared lot of wonders about Saturnian system - Methane rivers running to methane seas, plumes of water vapor jets and ice particles shooting into space upto 200 km above from suface, Sub-surface oceans where life might be present. It expanded our understanding where life could possibly exist in our solar system and in the broader universe. To prevent contaminating icy and habitable moons of Saturn, especially Enceladus with earth microbes, mission scientists have designed a strategy to crash the spacecraft into Saturn's atmosphere. This entire phase is called Grand Finale. It is so dramatic that NASA won an Emmy award for Grand Finale. 

Grand finale began on 26th April with its final flyby of Titan. The spacecraft used the gravity

of Titan to slingshot and adjusted its path and started orbiting in the gap between the planet

and its rings where no spacecraft has gone before. Cassini made 22 orbit dives over 6 and half weeks, one orbit every week from 26th April to 15th Sep. During this cassini observed that ice-particles rain down onto saturn from its rings and cassini also found that these are surprisingly young. On 15th Sep, 2017 the spacecraft made its final approach to Saturn. But this time, it will plunge into its atmosphere. Burning thrusters to speed up against saturn's push, pointing its antenna towards the earth, the spacecraft plunged into Saturn at a speed of nearly 1,20,000 kmph and burned up like a meteor. Cassini sent scientific data till last second possible. The last signal we received at 3:32 am PDT. Cassini became part of Saturn.The last images taken by cassini before its death and death animation video of NASA and to access all 10 articles of Cassini, please see below.

  Last Image by Cassini before crashing.

Enceladus Setting Behind Saturn as Cassini Spacecraft Plunges into Saturn

NASA at Saturn - Cassini Grand Finale Animation

Signing off..

If I were a spacecraft, I would die like Cassini...

Sreekanth Panjala

Science Popularizer | Author