If you have been watching the news for the past couple of days, then you must have heard the name ‘Cassini’ being mentioned quote a few times. This is because NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that we all must bid farewell to Cassini, as it made its final dive into Saturn last September 15.

WHAT IS CASSINI?

At first, people who are not really updated when it comes to space news thought that Cassini was actually a person who went on a suicide mission for the sake of further research of the planet Saturn. For the benefit of the doubt Cassini or Cassini-Huygens, is actually an orbiter-lander pair that was actually launched 20 years ago to Saturn. Cassini was actually meant for and was designed to orbit Saturn for a long time in an elliptical orbit, wherein it would protect the spacecraft from radiation and it would also allow multiple flybys of Ringed Planet’s moons. The Huygens on the other hand, was designed to detach and land on Titan’s rocky surface.
Huygens was only meant to send signals for a couple of hours wherein Cassini was actually anorbit. A lot of people wonder why Titan for a lander? Well, according to experts from NASA, there are a lot of moons in the solar system, and they are looking for some who might even be capable of supporting life.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE SPACECRAFT

If you think business class flights are very expensive, well you may want to think again, because flights from out of this world, also costs for an out of this world amount. This mission cost $3.26 billion, and a lot of people wonder how NASA actually managed to get the approval of the U.S. government when it comes to this billion dollar mission. However, these types of mission could actually really help the entire world especially to enhance the knowledge when it comes to our solar system, however, these accomplishments requires a huge amount of money.

It was actually supposed to be only $1 billion when it was first proposed during the 1990s, but over the years it has grown to $1 billion to $8 billion, however, they managed to finally settle with $3 billion. In 2012, NASA explained how it actually got that far, and apparently, “projects that fail to meet cost and schedule goals will receive additional funding and that subsequent scientific and technological success will overshadow any budgetary and schedule problems.”

FAREWELL, CASSINI

Everything must definitely come to an end, after all, nothing is permanent in this world, or even out of this world. That is because the spacecraft Cassini that was launched in 1997, had to say goodbye after being such a huge help to NASA researchers by giving them a lot of information and observations that will forever be treasured. NASA announced last Friday that Cassini sent home the last batch of photos before it took its final journey as it slowly lost signal and connection to Earth, the 20-year-old spacecraft heated up to hundreds and thousands of degrees as it broke apart and got disintegrated onto Saturn’s clouds.

Earl Maize, who is Cassini’s mission manager said during a live broadcast by NASA TV that, “This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you’re all an incredible team. I am going to call this the end of mission.”

The team was said to have broken into tears, gave each other hugs and stared into their view of the space. This 20 year journey hasn’t been easy, but it was indeed worth it. Cassini discovered six new moons and other mysterious “propeller” objects in the Saturn’s ring. It also found a vast ocean of salty water in one of the moons. Scientists from NASA said that it is best to “kill” Cassini to avoid the risk of it running out of fuel and crashing into one of Saturn’s moons. “We must protect those bodies for further explorations,” Jim Green, the leader of NASA’s planetary science program, explained during the press conference.

“Thank you, Cassini, and farewell,” Cassini’s mission manager, Earl Maize, said while talking to the press.
NASA is currently mourning over Cassini, people think it is silly but then again even if it is not a living object, it still served this world such great service by allowing our researchers from NASA to get a glimpse into Saturn for not just one but two decades. The $3 billion journey was considered to be worth it because of all the images Cassini managed to capture, who would’ve thought that it would cost billions of dollars to take these amazing photos of another planet.