Friday, September 15, 2017

Cassini requiem


We say goodbye to spacecraft Cassini today. It plunged (by design) into the atmosphere of Saturn earlier and it's faint signal was lost. Cassini was running out of fuel and rather than allowing it to randomly crash into something like a moon or rings it was decided to use the last remnants of propellant to steer it into Saturn itself, burning up in the outer layers its atmosphere. The picture above was taken from Cassini, it shows Saturn and it's rings with planet Earth highlighted as a faint dot in the background, if this doesn't make you feel totally and utterly insignificant then you're deluded. The final moments of the mission were captured in a video (see below)


It must have been a moving moment for the engineers and scientists in Pasadena who have dedicated a large chunk of their lives to this mission, but there is something deeply satisfying about uttering or hearing the words "Mission Complete", for this team it means success beyond all expectation and most importantly it means it's time for a new mission!

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