One billion miles away...
[whoosh]
The Cassini spacecraft approaches
its end of mission at Saturn.
[ ♪ ]
A story over three decades in the making
Linda Spilker: When I first started working on Cassini
my daughter Jennifer had just started kindergarten.
And now she is married and has a daughter of her own.
I worked on the Cassini project
for almost 30 years.
And that's an entire Saturn orbit.
Part of Cassini's success is really the tremendous
international collaboration.
Earl Maize: We had 3 space
agencies contributing to this.
NASA from the United States, ESA the European Space Agency,
and Agenzia Spatziale Italiana, the Italian space agency,
all contributing hardware to this mission.
Julie Webster: The beauty of
Cassini is the design.
It's the largest outer planetary spacecraft ever built.
Twelve different instruments brought from all over
the United States and Europe.
The Huygens probe built by the European Space Agency.
When you put all that together it's just a monumental machine.
Cassini launch October 15, 1997
3-2-1-
and liftoff of the Cassini spacecraft
on a billion mile trek to Saturn!
[rocket roars]
After a seven-year journey
Cassini provided scientists
with the first-ever
in-depth study of Saturn.
Uncovering the mysteries
of its rings,
atmosphere and moon system.
And capturing some of
the most stunning images
of the ring world.
Spilker: We turned the Cassini cameras down
to look at the rings
revealing them in a way we had never seen them before.
I remember coming back to JPL early in the morning
just so I could be there
and watch those pictures one by one come down.
And I felt like I could almost reach out and touch the rings
that were right there.
[ ♪ ]
We basically tried to carry in our tool box
everything you could think of
to explore the Saturn system.
Maize: We had been collaborating with the Europeans
ever since launch
to make sure that we had everything right for Huygens.
[ soft boom ]
The Huygens probe
was dropped onto Titan.
These are images from a billion miles away [chuckles]
on the surface of Titan.
It's just exhilarating.
There were boulders. There were pebbles.
There's a dry lake bed.
And I still get goose bumps just talking about it.
Webster: After everybody started getting their science
the beauty of what I saw in Cassini
was they started collaborating with each other
and saying "I have a picture of this part of Titan--
what does your picture look like?" you know.
Spilker: Looking back at what we were plannning to do
in those first 4 years, we've gone so far beyond that!
Webster: We basically explored the whole solar system
contained within the Saturnian system.
Maize: We remapped our investigations to concentrate on
the questions that Cassini raised.
The fact that there's interplanetary dust
raining in on Saturn.
And that collection of icy satellites and moons.
The fact we found subsurface oceans on Enceladus
which surprised everyone.
Spilker: Two of our instruments actually
sampled the plume of Enceladus
as we flew through
tasting the gas, measuring the particles
in a way that we hadn't planned.
Cassini has changed the paradigm
of where we might look for life.
That will be one of her legacies.
Maize: Thirteen years of exploring Saturn--
It really is just a... just an awesome mission.
[ ♪ ]
Mission's End
September 15, 2017
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology