Cassini preparing for final dive into Saturn’s atmosphere

Funded with $3.9B from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, the mission honors Giovanni Cassini, the 17th century Italian astronomer who spotted four of Saturn’s moons, and Christiaan Huygens, his Dutch contemporary who discovered Titan and was first to propose that Saturn had rings.

Other space stations in Madrid and California will also help monitor Cassini.

It’s sad and exhilarating for a University of Colorado Boulder scientist who’s been involved in the mission for many years. We set out to do something at Saturn, we did it, we did it extremely well, and we delivered more and more.

The probe was packed with 12 scientific instruments including spectrometers for identifying chemical elements, magnetic field detectors, a radar mapper, and cameras capable of capturing images at visible and invisible light wavelengths.

In January 2005, the tiny Huygens probe parachuted down through Titan’s thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere and landed on a pebble-strewn surface with the consistency of wet sand.

The spacecraft has completed many moon flybys while observing seasonal changes on Saturn and Titan. Built at Jet Propulsion Laboratory under the leadership of Robert Brown, operations for VIMS moved to the UA when Brown assumed a position as professor at LPL.

And it’s a good thing we did because the scientific discoveries have been near-constant in the 11 years since Cassini left home.

During its parachute descent the probe captured images of features that looked like shore lines and river systems on Earth. Those cameras, over the years of photographing Saturn, its rings and moons, created some of the most visually lovely images of the solar system.

The whole mission cost £2.9 billion.

A larger spacecraft with better instruments was then sent on the same journey: Voyager.

“It’s truly a first-of-its-kind event at Saturn”.

“To actually see this plume of water vapor and waterized particles coming out of the south pole of a moon that’s only 300 miles [480 kilometers] across was absolutely astonishing”, Spilker said at the teleconference.

Scientists believe that, like the similar sub-surface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa, the vast reservoir of water under the ice of Enceladus could harbour life. This will ensure they remain pristine for future exploration.

Nasa scientists are preparing to kill off the Cassini space probe with a spectacular suicidal dive into Saturn’s atmosphere on Friday. When Cassini arrived, the northern hemisphere of Saturn was emerging from winter. Saturn is an enormous ball of gas with no discernible surface, and when Cassini plunges in the probe will become a fireball.

Scientists plan to collect data from the spacecraft’s instruments until the very end of the mission. “It won’t go very deep, because it is not a probe created to go deep, but still deeper than anything else”. Bringing an end to its epic 13-year mission, the reliable craft is now just hours away from slamming into Saturn’s atmosphere and bringing its existence to a fiery end. Mission scientists learned to use Titan as a dance partner for the spacecraft, dipping into the moon’s gravitational potential to fling Cassini onto new trajectories while conserving precious fuel.