Cassini, an unmanned spacecraft shot into space on 15th October 1997 and reached Saturn in the year 2004. Cassini was carrying a man-made passenger, Huygens Probe that successfully landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005. It has been on a 20-year mission unraveling the beauty of Saturn and its 62 moons. Huygens Probe revealed Titan unlike any other moon, is much like Earth with a stable liquid on its surface.
After nearly 20 years Cassini is running out of fuel and can no longer orbit the planet. NASA planned Cassini’s final chapter for which it will plunge between Saturn’s rings 22 times before it makes a death dive into Saturn, the gas giant, in September.
Earl Maize, Cassini’s Project Manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said, “No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn’s other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like.”
The distance between Saturn’s atmosphere and the rings is approximately 2,400 km (1,500 miles). The rings are made up of particles of space debris and ice that are moving a fast pace and could disable the spacecraft. To which Eric said,“I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape.”
The next plunge in scheduled for May 2nd which will be its second of 22 plunges that it will make. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency have collaborated for a joint mission that came to be Cassini.
The reason to end Cassini’s mission is to avoid damaging any of Saturn’s moons. Their subsurface oceans have an indication of possible life in the future.
