Cassini Became the First Spacecraft to Touch Saturn's Air

For a few hours on Monday, NASA's Saturn spacecraft became an aircraft.




We've sent several probes to Saturn over the years, but none has been as successful as the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the gas giant since 2004. Cassini has made hundreds of groundbreaking discoveries of Saturn and its moons, but the mission is winding to a close, and Cassini will cease to exist a month from now.

But that doesn't mean that Cassini's job is done yet; there are still many more discoveries the spacecraft can make before the end. On Monday, Cassini took the first step toward making one more. It became the first spacecraft to dip into Saturn's atmosphere.


A month from now, the Cassini mission will end with the spacecraft plunging into Saturn's atmosphere and burning up, but one brief fireball isn't enough to collect the kind of data NASA wants. So for the last five orbits, Cassini will briefly dip into Saturn's atmosphere and collect critical data before emerging.

This data will include wind speed, atmospheric composition, and temperatures. At the same time, Cassini will study Saturn's auroras and send radar signals deep inside the planet. Scientists hope that these observations, and the observations of the few orbits left, will provide valuable insights into the ringed gas giant.

Unfortunately, good science takes time, so it might be months or even years before we learn all of the impacts of Cassini's work. But until then, we can trust that the spacecraft did everything it could to learn all of Saturn's secrets.

Source: NASA