NASA's Probe Cassini Flirts With Saturn's Rings, Flies Across Them For The First Time

NASA¡¯s spacecraft for the first time flirted past Saturn¡¯s rings on December 4, bringing the long mission to its last phase.

Reuters

The spacecraft, Cassini, came within 91,000 kilometers of Saturn¡¯s cloud tops and then dove through the planet¡¯s ring plane at about the spot where a faint ring is created by its small moons Janus and Epimetheus, NASA said.

Next year the space craft is expected to pass Saturn as closely 19 more times and each passing will be one week apart.

NASA¡¯s Cassini Project Scientist, Linda Spilker, said, ¡°It's taken years of planning, but now that we're finally here, the whole Cassini team is excited to begin studying the data that come from these ring-grazing orbits. This is a remarkable time in what's already been a thrilling journey.¡±

Flickr/Kabsik Park

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a $3.2 billion project involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency and was kicked off in October 1997. The spacecraft only arrived in orbit around Saturn in July 2004. Huygens landed on Titan, Saturn's satellite, in July 2005.

Next year on April 22, Cassini will fly close to Titan, whose gravity will reshape the probe's orbit so that it flies between Saturn and its innermost ring that lies 2,400 km from the planet.

The mission will come to an end when in September 2017, Cassini will make a suicide plunge into Saturn¡¯s thick and gassy atmosphere.