RIP Cassini

[Bob Juch]

At just before 8 AM ET today, Cassini was destroyed. Bringing Cassini back to Earth isn't an option (it's running out of fuel), but leaving it in Saturn's general area isn't either, as it may collide with one of the moons, and that could result in some type of biological contamination. Instead, the spacecraft is being directed to plunge into Saturn's atmosphere, burning up in the process. As a neat side effect, it's going to capture data about Saturn's atmosphere -- data we've never before been able to obtain -- and send it back to us here on Earth in real time. (There's a lag, of course, as the information can only move so quickly.)

This is a video of stitched-together photos from Cassini -- not all 400,000 photos, of course, but there are a lot in there!

[flockofseagulls104]

Thank you for this post. Nice video.