Since Cassini was first launched from Earth on October 15, 1997, it had arrived at Saturn’s orbit July 1, 2004, and Cassini has spent the last 13 years researching Saturn.

There are many discoveries that have been made during Cassini’s studies. We have learned that on one of Saturn’s 62 moons, Enceladus, underneath its icy surface, there is an ocean of water that is eight times as deep as the oceans from Earth. Cassini’s chemical analysis of the water suggests conditions are suitable for microorganisms to live there.

On one of Saturn’s largest moons, Titan, which is slighter bigger than mercury, Cassini was able to reveal that Titan experiences temperature of -179 degrees celsius, seasonal changes, wind, and rain. There are mountains made of ice, sand that is plastic, and liquid methane which assumes many of the roles of water. Cassini also flew over seas and lakes of liquid methane that are 170 meters deep.

On Saturn’s north pole, Cassini took pictures of a hexagonal hurricane that is about 32,000 km wide and winds that reach up to a whopping 330 mph which is almost four times as strong as ordinary hurricanes.

Also, Cassini may have possibly witnessed the birth of a new moon, named Peggy, that is 1 km wide.

On September 15, 2017, the Cassini space probe has been ordered to self-destruct by sending itself to be incinerated by Saturn’s atmosphere.

Cassini had ran out of fuel and it had been decided that it should not be left to wander uncontrolled around Saturn and its moons.

Cassini had been ordered to plunge toward Saturn’s atmosphere. The probe had begun tumbling towards Saturn, reaching speeds of 120,000 km and survived the fall for no more than 45 seconds within the planet’s gases, still relaying information of the chemical composition of Saturn’s Atmosphere. Cassini became melded into part of the planet it was created to analyze  and the mission had come to an end.

Although the Cassini mission has come to a close, it was a huge success in gathering data and furthering onto future exploration tasks. Celebration of Cassini is going around NASA and will later focus onto the next project. There will be quite some time before another mission near the scale of Cassini will take place.