On September 15th 2017, NASA's Cassini Spacecraft will end its mission to explore the planet Saturn. With its fuel supply depleted, NASA has decided not to allow the spacecraft to drift endlessly through space, but to depose of Cassini in a a more proper, complete, and fitting way. NASA instead has sent Cassini on a months long death spiral called, "The Grad Finale," before crashing the spacecraft into the atmosphere of Saturn.
Cassini was a $3.2 billion mission which was launched on October 15th 1997. It was a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency, and The Italian Space Agency. Its purpose was to explore the planet Saturn and its moons. It carried with it the Huygens Probe. Cassini reached Saturn on June 30th 2004. On January 14th 2005, Huygens successfully landed on Saturn's moon, Titan. Cassini has spent the last 13 years making an array of scientific discoveries.
During its mission, Cassini discovered geysers of water vapor coming from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. This caused researchers to conclude that the moon possessed an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface, and that that ocean may contain life. On Titan, Cassini discovered lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, most notably (methane). While temperatures on Titan are extremely cold, some scientists believe that microbial life may exist there as well.
Mission controllers at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) have been maneuvering Cassini into position for the "Grand Finale," since April 2017. They've been using close flybys of Saturn's moon Titan, in order to use it gravity to alter Cassini's trajectory. This has caused Cassini to dive between Saturn's rings. After 22 of these orbits, at 6:31 am ET on September 15th 2017, Cassini will interface with Saturn's atmosphere where the probe will finish its mission as it disintegrates.
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