It’s been a multi-decade road, but one of the pioneers of space exploration has gone out in a blaze of glory.
Originally shared by +Colin Sullender:
Cassini: End of Mission
At 4:55 am PDT, NASA’s Deep Space Network lost contact with the Cassini spacecraft as it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn.
This marks the end of a nearly 20-year-long, 4.9 billion mile mission that began aboard a Titan IV rocket in Cape Canaveral on October 15, 1997. After almost seven years of travel, including flybys of Venus, Earth, and Jupiter, Cassini entered orbit around the sixth planet of our Solar System on July 1, 2004, where it remained for over a decade. Earlier this year, Cassini began a series of harrowing dives between Saturn and its majestic rings, culminating today with its destruction in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. With fuel running low, this method of disposal was selected to minimize the risk of biological contamination of Saturn’s moons.
Cassini is responsible for an immense body of knowledge about our Solar System. From tests validating Einstein’s theory of general relativity to discovering six new moons orbiting Saturn to landing the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan, the spacecraft has been a workhorse of NASA, ESA, and ASI for many years.
And now she has become one with the planet she so magnificently portrayed.
Sic Itur Ad Astra
Source: https://youtu.be/xrGAQCq9BMU (NASA JPL, Erik Wernquist)
#ScienceGIF #Science #GIF #Cassini #Huygens #NASA #JPL #ESA #ASI #Saturn #Mission #Space #Discovery #Orbit #Rings #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Destruction #Burn #Finale
Now there are a lot of nuts out there that say the whole space program is fake.. That we never left orbit. And they point out everything we see is animation/fake. Like this… obviously there is no camera watching from a distance… Now I came on today looking for the real footage of the on board cameras and all I get is this simulation…. I really wish they would not do this…. Im beginning to side with the nuts… Not that we have not been to space but that most of what we get fed is this fake stuff…. Same with all the mars lander footage… The same probe/ landing simulation…. *sigh
+Hunter Seeker While some might size on (clear) simulation animation, some of the angles obviously couldn't be replicated through the onboard cameras. I don't even know that we have or will have a final "rocketing to burn-up" video — the transmission rate on Cassini pictures is, I believe, very slow, and it can't pick up on transmitting pictures after it's burnt up.
+Dave Hill We already have the last photo:
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/7792/
The feed after at was almost certainly reserved for other science experiment telemetry (most likely the magnetic field and mass spectrometer instrumentation).