| Issue 2 | Volume 148 | Tuesday, September 19, 2017 | theavion.com |
Photo Courtesy: NASA JPL
An Ambassador From Earth Says “Goodbye” Cassini-Huygens Ends 13-Year Mission to Saturn and its Moons
Sergio E. Taleisnik Correspondent
A bittersweet farewell: was conducted on September 15th, as mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) monitored the scheduled destructive atmospheric reentry of the Cassini Spacecraft into Saturn, marking the end of
the first-ever in-depth study mission of the ringed planet. More than just another space probe: The original objectives of this $3.9 billion collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency were -among others- to study Saturn's atmosphere as well as
its rings and satellite's geology. An already ambitious endeavor, Cassini-Huygens provided more scientific output than expected. Six new Saturn satellites were discovered, and scientists are now actually considering it a game-changer for space exploration: "Looking back at what we were planning to do in those
Photo Courtesy: NASA/ Joel Kowsky
What’s Inside
Controllers monitor the reentry of Cassini at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
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first four years, we've gone so far beyond that", said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "Cassini has changed the paradigm of where we might look for life. That will be one of her legacies". At the end of Cassini's lifespan scientists collected even more data by making the spacecraft perform passes through the gaps between Saturn and its rings, attempts that would not have been feasible during the course of the mission due to the risk involved. A 4.9 billion-mile journey in a glimpse: Cassini-Huygens was launched in October 1997 from Cape Canaveral AFS aboard a Titan IVB rocket. During its trip to Saturn, the spacecraft performed several gravitational slingshot fly-bys: two of Venus in 1998 and 1999, one of Earth on 1999 and finally one of Jupiter in 2000; the latter providing scientists an opportunity to perform observations. Upon arriving in Saturnian orbit in 2004, Cassini began its primary mission. The Huy-
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gens probe descended in 2005 into Titan, one of Saturn's moons, to study its atmosphere and surface. Cassini then continued orbiting Saturn and performing fly-bys of its satellites through 2017 as the mission duration was extended from three to thirteen years. NASA decided to disintegrate Cassini in Saturn's atmosphere to prevent the spacecraft from contaminating the planet's satellites, believed by scientists to offer potentially habit-
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able environments. The near future: Even though the spacecraft was destroyed during the reentry, the data collected during its years of operation will continue to be used by scientists for analysis. "Cassini may be gone, but its scientific bounty will keep us occupied for many years," said Spilker. "We've only scratched the surface of what we can learn from the mountain of data it has sent back over its lifetime."