After 20 years of exploring the solar system, NASA’s Cassini mission is ending with a BANG! The Cassini probe finished its controlled descent and burned up in Saturn's atmosphere this morning at 7:55 am EDT.
Why destroy it? NASA scientists don't want to leave Cassini in space where it could someday collide with other planets or rocky moons. If it did, the craft could contaminate these places with microbes from Earth that could still be living on the spacecraft.
Cassini launched in 1997 and has traveled more than 2.2 billion miles. While circling Saturn 294 times, it discovered some amazing things (see Mission Highlights). It examined Saturn’s rings, which are made of tiny particles of dust, rock, and ice. The spacecraft also identified oceans on two of Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus.
On board was the Huygens (HOY-gens) probe, which landed on Titan in 2015. It was the first landing on a moon other than our own! It took pictures of the pebbly surface near its landing site and studied the moon's atmosphere.
Scientists recently analyzed gases Cassini sampled from geysers on Enceladus, which send plumes from its ocean into space. “From a billion miles away, we’ve sampled an alien ocean without even getting our toes wet,” says Jo Pitesky, a NASA project scientist on the Cassini flight team. Scientists hope to someday send robots to see if life exists in this alien ocean.
Check out a bonus video from Science World.