Spacecraft ends Saturn mission
As it did, the spacecraft delivered a final set of scientific observations, according to NASA. The agency lost contact with Cassini at 7:55 a.m. Eastern time (4:55 a.m. on the Pacific Coast).
Launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004. Along with jaw-dropping photographs of the ringed planet, it delivered insights that challenged the way scientists view the search for life. Here are some of the key discoveries, along with the spacecraft's images:
Saturn’s magnetic field lines up with the planet’s poles. This field creates auroras.
Saturn's moon Titan has “a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet,” according to NASA. But unlike Earth, Titan has little oxygen.
Another moon, Enceladus, has a subsurface saltwater ocean and possibly hydrothermal vents. It has become "a promising lead in our search for worlds where life could exist,” NASA concludes.
Cassini “captured extraordinary ring-moon interactions, observed the lowest ring-temperature ever recorded at Saturn, (and) discovered that ... Enceladus is the source for Saturn’s E ring,” NASA recounts.
Swirling storms stretch across Saturn’s north and south poles. The spacecraft found that the eye of a north polar storm was about 50 times wider than the eye of an Earth hurricane.
