NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is about to crash into Saturn
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A NASA spacecraft which was the first to orbit Saturn is about to finish its 13-year mission to the ringed planet. It’s called Cassini and it’s been probing Saturn since July 2004.
It has provided enough data for almost four thousand scientific papers after studying the planet’s system for so long.
The craft is running low on fuel, so NASA’s decided to crash the spacecraft into Saturn’s atmosphere.
The 22ft robot craft will break into fragments and burn up as it ploughs into the ringed planet’s cloud tops, ending a 20-year mission that cost £2.9 billion.
Because Saturn is so far away, the spacecraft’s last transmissions will take around 83 minutes to reach Earth.
Huge discoveries!
Thanks to Cassini, scientists now know that Saturn’s moon Titan has lakes and seas filled with liquid methane and ethane. It’s also now thought that a global ocean under the icy surface of another moon, Enceladus, may sustain life.
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