‘End of mission’: Nasa farewells Saturn explorer Cassini as it plunges into gas giant
As the only spacecraft to ever orbit the planet, it showed us the rings and moons up close during its 20-year journey
Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft disintegrated in the skies above Saturn early on Friday in a final, fateful blaze of cosmic glory and following a remarkable 20-year journey.
Confirmation of Cassini’s demise came at about 7.55am, when radio signals from the spacecraft – its last scientific gifts to Earth – came to an abrupt halt. The radio waves went flat and Cassini fell silent.
The spacecraft actually burned up like a meteor 83 minutes earlier as it dived through Saturn’s atmosphere, becoming one with the giant gas planet it set out to explore in 1997. But it took that long for the news to arrive at Earth a billion miles away.
Watch Cassini’s grand finale video
This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft
The only spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn, Cassini showed us the planet, its rings and moons up close in all their glory. Perhaps most tantalising, ocean worlds were unveiled by Cassini and its hitchhiking companion, the Huygens lander, on the moons Enceladus and Titan, which could possibly harbour life.