I thought this was a pretty good article and wanted to share it. Cassini has had a good run...
The article below can be found here: Scientific American Article
Cassini’s “Grand Finale” Will Be a Blaze of Glory
All good things must come to an end.
For NASA’s Cassini orbiter—its fuel dwindling after 13 years exploring Saturn, along with the planet’s sprawling rings and dozens of icy moons—the end will come Friday at 7:55 A.M. Eastern time. That’s when mission planners project radio communications will be lost with the two-ton, bus-size spacecraft as it plunges into the giant planet’s turbulent atmosphere at more than 122,000 kilometers per hour.
Within seconds the gas streaming around the plummeting probe will reach temperatures hot enough to melt its aluminum chassis, followed by the iridium cladding that shields its plutonium power source. With its radio link to Earth severed, Cassini’s last “transmission” will be the light from this fireball, a modest blaze of glory that astronomers might glimpse from Earth. A minute after its final signal, the sophisticated spacecraft will be reduced to a rapidly dissipating spray of vaporized metal some 200 kilometers beneath Saturn’s swirling cloud tops. But as scientists and members of the public gather in various parts of the world for bittersweet celebrations of the mission’s conclusion, it is clear Cassini’s legacy will endure.
“We are concluding the longest, deepest, most comprehensive scientific exploration of a remote planetary system ever undertaken, a system so alien it might as well have been orbiting another star in another galaxy,” says Carolyn Porco, the planetary scientist who leads Cassini’s imaging team. “And we have been profoundly successful.”
2
Cassini to Plunge into Saturn on Friday (7:55 AM EST)
Re: Cassini to Plunge into Saturn on Friday (7:55 AM EST)
Good Answers: