NASA’s Cassini mission is ending with a BANG! After 20 years of exploring the solar system, it completed its planned crash into Saturn on September 15 at 7:55 am EDT.
Why destroy it? NASA scientists don't want to leave Cassini in space. It could someday collide with other planets or rocky moons. There could still be microbes from Earth living on the spacecraft. Scientists don't want Earth microbes to contaminate these places.
Cassini launched in 1997. It has traveled more than 2.2 billion miles. While circling Saturn 294 times, it discovered some amazing things (see Mission Highlights). It examined Saturn’s rings. The rings are made of tiny particles of dust, rock, and ice. The spacecraft also found oceans on two of Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus.
On board was the Huygens (HOY-gens) probe. It landed on Titan in 2015. It was the first human-made object to land on a moon other than our own! Huygens took pictures of the small pebbles and rocks near its landing site. It also analyzed the moon's atmosphere.
During its trip, Cassini took samples from geysers on Enceladus. The geysers shoot jets of water from its ocean into space. “From a billion miles away, we’ve sampled an alien ocean without even getting our toes wet,” says Jo Pitesky. She's a NASA project scientist on the Cassini team. Scientists hope to someday send robots to see if life exists in this alien ocean.
Check out a bonus video from Science World.