Why Cassini Is Ending Its Life with a Kamikaze Plunge

This Friday, NASA’s Cassini probe will run out of fuel and take pictures as it plummets at 75,000 miles per hour through Saturn’s atmosphere. It won’t be crashing—the heat from friction will make Cassini immolate in the sky.

Cassini has had a good run. Since arriving at Saturn, and of its many moons. It found the largest, Titan, harboring methane oceans and icy Enceladus venting water-rich plumes from over 100 so-far identified geysers; the latter might bear ocean life beneath its miles-thick ice cover. Cassini’s dive towards Saturn’s surface will present scientists with a never-before-seen perspective of the planet, along with its atmosphere and magnetic fields, and data on Saturn’s rings’ age and make-up.