Saturn craft dies in ‘blaze of glory’
Cassini plunges into planet’s atmosphere in final ‘suicide dive’
A pioneering spacecraft that has transformed our knowledge of Saturn and its moons has ended its mission with a spectacular “suicide dive” into the ringed planet’s atmosphere.
Americanspaceagencynasa carried out the destruction of Cassini to bring to a close what it called “a thrilling epoch” in space exploration.
For 13 years the 22ft nuclearpowered probe had been gathering a treasure trove of images and data from the Saturnian system.
At 12:55 pm UK time, all communication with the craft was lost as Cassini tumbled to its doom 930 miles above Saturn’s cloud tops.
Plummetingat77,000mph,it took less than a minute to disintegrate into fragments and burn up.
Mission controllers at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, clapped and hugged each other when the end of radio contact was confirmed.
Scientists talked of a “bittersweet” mixture of emotions, both sadness at Cassini’s loss and intense pride in what they had achieved.
Cassini project manager Dr Earl Maize, who directed Cassini’s final moments from the JPL control room in Pasadena, said: “The Cassini operations team did an absolutely stellar job guiding the spacecraft to itsnobleend.whatawaytogo. Truly a blaze of glory.”
Project scientist Dr Linda Spilker said: “Things never will be quite the same for those of us on the Cassini team now that the spacecraft is no longer flying.
“But we take comfort knowing that every time we look up at Saturn in the night sky, part of Cassini will be there, too.”
The decision to kill off Cassini was taken because the craft would soon run out of fuel and become impossible to steer.
Scientists feared a collision with Titan or Enceladus, two of Saturn’s moons that in the past ten years have shown a potential to host simple life.
Safe disposal of Cassini was seen as the best way to avoid the remote possibility of con- taminating the pristine moons with Earth bugs.
The spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1997, took seven years to reach Saturn and was originally intended to explore the planet and its moons for just three years.
In the end its life was extended by a decade.
One of Cassini’s most important discoveries was the existence of a watery ocean under the icy surface of Enceladus that could conceivably harbour life. Cassini has also discovered seven new moons, six of which have been named, observed raging storms on Saturn and shed new light on the planet’s famous rings.
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