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NASA’S CASSINI SPACECRAFT is no more.
The craft disintegrated in the skies above Saturn today, following a remarkable journey of 20 years.
Radio signals from the spacecraft — a final burst of scientific data — came to an abrupt halt this afternoon.
The radio waves went flat, and the spacecraft fell silent.
Cassini actually burned up like a meteor 83 minutes earlier, as it dove through Saturn’s atmosphere, becoming one with the planet it set out in 1997 to explore. But it took that long for the last signal to arrive at Earth.
More than 1,500 people, many of them past and present team members, jammed Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California for what was described as both a vigil and celebration. Even more gathered at nearby California Institute of Technology.
The only spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn, Cassini showed the planet, its rings and moons up close in all their glory. Ocean worlds were unveiled on the moons Enceladus and Titan, which could possibly harbour life.
Cassini snapped its “last memento photos” of the Saturn system yesterday.
Ever dutiful to the end, it also sampled Saturn’s atmosphere this morning as it made its final, fateful plunge.
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We’re capable of such great things. Glad to hear some positive news for a change
This was a very controlled dive into Saturn as they wanted to keep the moons clear of contamination pristine for the future . Just in case we decide to colonise them. ( I assume after we have made earth uninhabitable )
Just to give credit where credit’s due:
the Cassini orbiter is a NASA *and* Italian Space Agency (ASI) project.
The whole mission was “Cassini-Huygens” run by NASA, ESA and ASI.
It included the ESA (European Space Agency) Huygens lander, which is where Ireland plays at least a small part as one of the ESA members and funders.
5 billion miles travelled. It would take us about 75 minutes to get to Saturn travelling at the speed of light.
@Honeybadger197: 147,000 miles per second if memory serves me right.
@FPL Thommo: 186,000 miles per second
@Ibhar Mac Suibhne: even faster!
RIP Cassini
@Neville Patterson: was it insured?
@Tony Skillington:
NASA have already admitted that they crashed it on purpose. Should’ve kept shush. They probably had fire and theft cover.
@Tony Skillington: third party fire and theft.
@WinSomeLoseSome: note to self: Read subsequent posts in thread before responding to question!
@Neville Patterson:
I don’t know why, but it makes me feel sad. :(
@Tweety McTweeter: who could have stolen it??!?!!
I’m actually emotional, we are a great bunch when we do great things
In the same amount of time it takes Saturn to make an orbit of the Sun, the Earth will have run the same circuit 30 times. As the Earth overtakes Saturn with each pass, the rings of Saturn will have changed and the Solstice has just occurred on the planet -
http://www.curtrenz.com/Saturn-B.JPG
It helps people understand what is going to happen on Earth in 6 days and twice each year as unique events.
@Gerald Kelleher: In 6 days the Sun will come into view for the first time in 6 months at the South pole (polar sunrise) just as the Sun will set at the North pole and remain out of view until next March 21st . For those with a sense of style, our planet has two distinct day/night cycles with their own specific dawn, sunrise, noon, sunset, twilight and midnight. At the South and North poles the Sun rises and sets on the Equinoxes while polar noon and midnight are on the Solstices . The rings of Saturn help observers on Earth appreciate that when daily rotation is subtracted, the entire surface of the Earth and any other planet has a single day/night cycle due to the forward motion of that planet through space -
Was an ‘insurance job’?
Where’s Gerald?
@SteoG: That’s enough. I have been to JPL in Pasadena on invitation and these are brilliant engineering people however being really good at building spacecraft and satellites does not often make people talented in using data and observations supplied by those instruments. I use their imaging all the time but they themselves are hostages to theorists from the last century who have turned space into a junkyard for worthless exotic notions regardless as to how popular they are.
@Gerald Kelleher: of course, you know better. How long is a day on Saturn?
@Dave O Keeffe: It is not a matter of knowing better but merely telling people what they already know. If you lived at the South pole the Sun comes into view only once a year and that will happen on the September Equinox in a few days. It has been constant dawn for over a month until polar sunrise and then the Sun stays constantly in view for 6 months. The people at Met Eireann muddy this insight by creating the notion of the astronomical and meteorological seasons and absolutely refuse to look at the common sense view that you and many other readers here are aware of . This is as real as it gets -
Why did they crash it into Saturn? Was it incapable of serving its purpose? The article seems to indicate that it was working perfectly up until it was intentionally destroyed.
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