Here's What Cassini Is Up To As It Dives Into Saturn's Inner Atmosphere For One Last Hurrah

Launched from Earth in 1997, NASA¡¯s Cassini spacecraft took close to nine years to reach its destination, Saturn, where it¡¯s spent years observing the planet and transmitting back data. Now, the space agency is giving the probe an explosive send off - literally.

An illustration of NASA¡¯s Cassini spacecraft above Saturn

Nearly 20 years after being sent off on a solo voyage to the ringed planet, Cassini is nearly out of fuel reserves. NASA is now ready to decommission the $3.26 billion probe in a most unusual way, by blowing it up in space.

According to the agency, Cassini needs to be destroyed to avoid damaging any alien life in the vicinity. See, while other probes in the past have been left to orbit around heavenly bodies long after they¡¯ve gone dormant, Cassini is a little different. According to the space agency, leaving it in its current course around Saturn could be catastrophic. The gravity from the planet and its many moons could wreak havoc on the defunct probe¡¯s unsupervised orbit, possibly sending it plunging into the moons Titan or Enceladus, both of which may be capable of supporting alien life.

In fact, Cassini sealed its own fate back in 2015, when it discovered a saltwater ocean buried beneath the ice on Enceladus. Since then, the space agency has also discovered plumes of icy material ejecting from the surface, which host the perfect conditions for microbes to survive. According to Earl Maize, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the agency can¡¯t risk damaging or contaminating any microscopic alien life in a crash.

¡°Cassini has got to be put safely away,¡± he said. ¡°And since we wanted to stay at Saturn, the only choice was to destroy it in some controlled fashion.¡±

An illustration of Cassini breaking up over Saturn - NASA/JPL

Cassini will brave 22 dives between Saturn and its rings during the next few months, transmitting back data to Earth the likes of which we haven¡¯t seen before. Now, during its final run which began April 26, Cassini is diving towards Saturn¡¯s surface at over 122,000 kph approximately once per week. Because that gap between the rings is a region no spacecraft has ever explored, Cassini was using its dish-shaped high-gain antenna as a protective shield while passing through the ring plane, which is why NASA temporarily lost contact with the probe on its first dive yesterday. Now, Earth has re-established contact with Cassini from the giant 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California.

This time, there¡¯s no coming back around the planet for the probe. Instead, NASA will use the remainder of Cassini's days to harvest all the data it gathers through these last few dives. Eventually, as it completes the final dive on September 15, the pioneering probe will struggle to keep its antennae pointed upward as it transmits the last data from its final run back to Earth, before it burns up in the atmosphere.

All good things must end, and it looks like after 20 exciting years, Cassini is going out for one last ride.