Article Image

IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

The Cassini spacecraft crashed into Saturn, ending a successful 20-year mission

• https://www.washingtonpost.com, By Sarah Kaplan

"The signal from the spacecraft is gone and within the next 45 seconds so will be the spacecraft," program manager Earl Maize reported from mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just after 4:55 a.m. local time. "This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team."

One of the last pieces of data captured by Cassini was an infrared image of the place into which it took its final plunge. The image, taken 15 hours before the spacecraft's demise, reveals a spot on Saturn's dark side just north of the planet's equator where the spacecraft disintegrated shortly after losing contact with Earth.


ContentSafe