NASA bidding adieu to Cassini probe: Spacecraft will explode and become a part of Saturn

The time is about to come when NASA scientists will be saying goodbye to 20-year-old Cassini spacecraft, which has been on a journey around Saturn for all these years. NASA Cassini spacecraft has kicked off its thrilling final chapter.

The last phase will see Cassini making a series of daring moves between Saturn and its rings. After that, the Cassini will take a plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, explode and die.

The NASA Cassini spacecraft will make a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan and then it will leap over the icy rings of the planet, starting 22 weekly dives between the planet and its rings between April and September.

Cassini will plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn on the final orbit. It will lose contact with Earth and will burn up like a meteor and become the part of the planet itself.

That dramatic event is the capstone of six months of daring exploration and scientific discovery. At times, the spacecraft will skirt the very inner edge of the rings; at other times, it will skim the outer edges of the atmosphere.

As Cassini plunges past Saturn, the spacecraft will collect some incredibly rich and valuable information that was too risky to obtain earlier in the mission.

The spacecraft will make detailed maps of Saturn’s gravity and magnetic fields, revealing how the planet is arranged internally, and possibly helping to solve the irksome mystery of just how fast Saturn is rotating.

Cassini's particle detectors will sample icy ring particles being funnelled into the atmosphere by Saturn’s magnetic field. Its cameras will take amazing, ultra-close images of Saturn’s rings and clouds.

Cassini’s final images will have been sent to Earth several hours before its final plunge, but even as the spacecraft makes its fateful dive into the planet’s atmosphere, it will be sending home new data in real time.

Key measurements will come from its mass spectrometer, which will sample Saturn’s atmosphere, telling us about its composition until contact is lost.

From its launch in 1997 to the unique Grand Finale science of 2017, the Cassini-Huygens mission has racked up a remarkable list of achievements, NASA said.

By 2017, Cassini will have spent 13 years in orbit around Saturn, following a seven-year journey from Earth.

The spacecraft is running low on the rocket fuel used for adjusting its course. If left unchecked, this situation would eventually prevent mission operators from controlling the course of the spacecraft.

Two moons of Saturn, Enceladus and Titan, have captured news headlines over the past decade as Cassini data revealed their potential to contain habitable or at least “prebiotic” - environments.

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NASA has decided to safely dispose of the spacecraft in the atmosphere of Saturn to avoid the unlikely possibility of Cassini someday colliding with one of these moons. This will ensure that Cassini won’t contaminate any future studies of habitability and potential life on those moons. 

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(With inputs from PTI)