Burn, baby, burn.
Gone, but never forgotten.
Cassini, one of NASA’s flagship spacecraft, is poised to meet its fiery end today as it plunges down into Saturn’s atmosphere at a speed of 123,000kph (77,000mph) per hour, where it will soon vaporise. The shuttle was to point its antennas in the direction of Earth as it sent its final message at 03:32 PDT (10:32 UTC), …
Genuinely a little sad to see the end of this mission. But it does feel like the big fellah has been out there for a long time just getting on with it's job and going well above and beyond it's design.
It's a shame there will be no picture or video feed of it's decent into the clouds but that probably a bit more majestic in the mind than in reality.
Another commentard made mention of deep space probes being one of modern humanity's rare noble ventures and I think that's a very good way to put it. There really is very little be negative about with these missions.
So farewell fine machine and I hope the engineers, scientists and all involved stand tall after a job exceptionally well done.
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although the final bits of Cassini's signal will not reach Earth until nearly an hour and a half later, due to the travel time for its radio signal.
Underlining the statement "the science isn't going to stop" at the end of the article is the mention of the speed of the data. Had it been bad news we would have known immediately.
The following message was just received from Saturn.
"PLUTONIUM? YOU SOCK CUTTERS JUST DUMPED 100001B OF YOUR SO-CALLED //KILOGRAMS\\ OF PLUTONIUM ISOTOPE NUMBER 11101110B INTO OUR DAMN ATMOSPHERE!?? YOU PIGS! WE ARE PREPARING OUR WAR ARMADA OF BATTLE CRUISERS - AND WE ARE COMING TO EARTH TO DEAL OUT PAINFUL VENGEANCE - WE WILL SURGICALLY DESTROY ONE OF YOUR CITIES TO EXTRACT OUR REVENGE - PERHAPS THE ONE YOU CALL //PYONGYANG\\ - WE WILL BE THERE IN THREE OF YOUR EARTH WEEKS"