Cassini Spacecraft Prepares For A Fiery Farewell In Saturn's Atmosphere
NASA's probe has spent the past 13 years orbiting Saturn, making a number of important discoveries along the way. On Friday, it will hurl itself into the planet's atmosphere and disintegrate.
After 13 years in orbit around Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is about to plunge itself into the planet's atmosphere and disintegrate. NASA decided to put an end to the mission on Friday because the probe is almost out of fuel.
Cassini has provided exquisite details about the second-largest planet in our solar system.
Take the hurricanes at Saturn's poles, for example. "These hurricanes are large enough they'd cover about half the continental United States, about 50 times larger than a typical Earth hurricane," says Cassini project scientist of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
