Farewell, Cassini, the little probe that could!

Just before 8am EDT today, Cassini, the spacecraft sent to study Saturn and her moons, sent her last signal.  She plunged into the Saturnian atmosphere to end a massively successful mission.  Launched October 15, 1997, she spent Cassini spent 7 years en route and arrived at Saturn in 2004.  For 13 years, she has explored the gas giant and released the Huygens probe from the ESA to land on Titan, a first for a celestial body in the outer solar system.

Cassini did flybys of Jupiter, our moon and Asteroid 2685 Masursky.  She discovered new moons Methone, Pallene, Polydeucesin, Daphnis, Anthe, Aegaeon and S/2009 S 1.  I'm sure they will find a better name for the last one.

She also performed flybys of moons Titan, Phoebe, Enceladus, Iapetus, Rhea, Hyperion and Dione.

Seventeen countries joined together in this effort.

Dione and Saturn's rings

Saturn's moon, Dione, looks split in half by Saturn's rings in this picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft from 1.4 million miles away.  Turnus, a medium sized crater, can be seen just above the seemingly razor thin rings. 

Discovered by Giovanni Cassini (the astronomer for whom the spacecraft is named), Dione wasn't named until 1847 when John Herschel (son of William who discovered Uranus) suggested the name of the sisters and brothers of Cronus be used.

Dione is the 15th largest moon in our solar system.

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia18358/dione-divided

Cassini-Hugyens spacecraft launched in 1997

The Cassini-Huygens space probe, now circling Saturn and her moons and sending back tons of data, started its seven year trek on October 15, 1997.  It arrived at the planet in June 2004 for a four year mission, which it completed in 2008 however it is still going strong.  It has sent back hundreds of gigabytes of data on Saturn, Titan, Enceladus, Iapetus, Dione, Hyperion, Tethys and other moons.

Starting this week, Cassini will make three close encounters with Enceladus.  She will fly through the icy material continually erupting from the moon's surface.  A tricky maneuver, given the speed of the probe and what damage even a small particle can do.

Part of the mission was to deploy the Huygens lander on the surface of Titan.  It landed with little difficulty and transmitted about 90 minutes after touchdown.  Images show an orange surface covered with hydrocarbon-coated water ice pebbles.  The temperature was a balmy -179.35 °C!  It's the farthest surface landing from Earth.