It's the beginning of the end for one of the most insightful spacecraft ever launched in space, the final chapter of a epic story spanning across two decades.
Saturn captured by Cassini
WE DON'T HAVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW AMAZING THIS SHOT OF SATURN IS!
After revealing absolutely breathtaking, never-before-seen images of Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is scheduled to enter the final phase of its mission around the second largest planet in our solar system.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a $3.2 billion project involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency and was kicked off in October 1997. The spacecraft only arrived in orbit around Saturn in July 2004. Huygens landed on Titan, Saturn's satellite, in July 2005.
Cassini's Grand Finale
Dubbed as the Grand Finale, as it gets ready to perform a set of ultra-close fly-by around Saturn's upper atmosphere, Cassini will eventually complete its final five orbits around the planet starting on August 14 (IST).
During this last hurrah, Cassini will get as close to 1,630 km from Saturn's cloud tops, where it's expected to encounter atmosphere dense enough to require rocket thrusters for stability -- just like Cassini's flight across Saturn's moon Titan, which has similar conditions.
cassini
AN ARTIST'S IMPRESSION OF CASSINI
Even in its death spiral, Cassini will collect data on the atmosphere close to Saturn's cloud tops -- which is still uncharted territory -- make detailed, high-resolution observations of Saturn's auroras, temperature, and the vortexes at the planet's poles. Its radar will peer deep into the atmosphere to reveal small-scale features as fine as 25 kilometres wide - nearly 100 times smaller than the spacecraft could observe prior to its final mission phase, the Grand Finale.
Even though it's been flying for two decades, it only flirted with Saturn's mesmerizing rings for the first time in December last year, flying close to and through them. After analyzing the planet and its satellites in great detail, NASA announced in last April that Cassini needs to be destroyed to avoid damaging any alien life in the vicinity. Towards the end of April 2017, Cassini dived between Saturn and its innermost ring for the very first time, sending back truly spectacular images of that journey.
"As it makes these five dips into Saturn, followed by its final plunge, Cassini will become the first Saturn atmospheric probe," Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, said.
On September 11, a distant encounter with Saturn's moon, Titan, will slow Cassini's orbit around Saturn and bend its path slightly to send the spacecraft headlong into a deep plunge and crash on September 15, ending its long and rewarding journey.