Cassini End of Mission Commentary @AboutNASAdotCom

The Cassini End of Mission NASA was a historic event that marked the end of a nearly two-decade-long mission of exploration and discovery of Saturn and its moons. The Cassini spacecraft, which was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004, performed many scientific and engineering feats, such as delivering the Huygens probe to Titan, flying through the plumes of Enceladus, and diving between Saturn and its rings. The mission revealed many secrets and surprises about the ringed planet and its diverse satellites, some of which may harbor life.

The mission ended on September 15, 2017, when Cassini deliberately plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back data until it was destroyed by the intense heat and pressure. This was done to prevent the spacecraft from crashing into and contaminating any of the potentially habitable moons of Saturn. Cassini’s final moments were captured by the Deep Space Network and relayed to Earth, where scientists and engineers celebrated and mourned the loss of the spacecraft. Cassini’s legacy, however, lives on in the vast amount of data and images it collected, which will continue to inspire and inform future generations of explorers.