Latest images from Cassini. The last hours of the Cassini probe (15 photos)

The latest image taken by the Cassini probe was published on the website of the American space agency NASA. The photo was taken before the probe burned up in Saturn's atmosphere. It shows a view of the planet's night side as light reflected from Saturn's rings.

NASA showed the latest image of the Cassini probe

The space agency NASA published on its website the last image taken by the Cassini probe before it burned up in Saturn's atmosphere. The shot shows a view of the night side of the planet in the light reflected from the rings of Saturn. There is also a color version of the photo created using filters. The Cassini probe was launched in October 1997.

"Opera finale": a sad farewell to Cassini

Today NASA said goodbye to the Cassini interplanetary probe, which completed its thirteen-year study of Saturn and its moons. As planned in advance, in the “Finale of the Opera,” as the aerospace agency called the end of the probe’s mission, it burned up in the atmosphere of the gas giant.

Goodbye Cassini. A probe with 13 years of experience was burned to protect the ecology of Saturn's moons

For 13 years Cassini (“Cassini”), spacecraft NASA, told scientists about the existence of ocean worlds on Saturn's moons - Titan and Enceladus. WITH space station said goodbye the day before. The last signal from the probe was received by the NASA Deep Space Network antenna complex in Canberra, Australia.

NASA has published the latest photo of Saturn through the eyes of Cassini

NASA's Cassini interplanetary probe completed its 13-year mission to explore Saturn last day and heroically died in action, burning up in the atmosphere of the gas giant. The probe was 20 years old. “The spacecraft did everything we asked it to do and transmitted data until the very last minute,” said Cassini mission director Earl Mays.

Latest Cassini images published

NASA has published the latest images taken by Cassini. An automatic interplanetary station recently completed its mission, dying in the atmosphere of Saturn. Thus, the vehicle's long journey around the planet, which lasted 13 years, ended. $CUT$ According to telemetry data, Cassini entered Saturn's atmosphere as planned.

NASA showed the latest image of Cassini

The NASA space agency published on its website the last frame that the Cassini spacecraft transmitted to Earth before burning in the upper layers of Saturn's atmosphere. The last image clearly shows the layers of the atmosphere in which the device burned down.

The Cassini station ceased to exist after diving into the atmosphere of Saturn

On September 15, 2017, the historic Cassini space mission to explore Saturn, its ring system and moons ended. The Cassini interplanetary station, named after the Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Cassini, was launched two decades ago - in 1997.

Cassini transmitted the last signal and photo of Saturn before its death

The International Aerospace Agency NASA reported that the Cassini probe transmitted latest pictures before entering Saturn's atmosphere and burning up. At about 14 hours 56 minutes Moscow time, NASA specialists lost the probe signal, 45 seconds after that it should have ceased to exist.

Cassini probe completes 20-year mission

Almost 20 year mission space probe Cassini was completed today at 14.54 Moscow time. The interplanetary station was sent into the atmosphere of Saturn, in the dense layers of which it burned up. During its mission, the device transmitted 453,048 photographs to Earth, which is 635 GB of scientific data about the second largest planet solar system.

In development of the device Many scientists from NASA and ESA took part. It was created in order to study Saturn and its satellites in more detail.

Cassini is the most complex, largest and expensive of the American automatic interplanetary spacecraft (project budget more than $3 billion). Its weight was 6 tons, and its height was more than 10 meters. On board it was installed 12 scientific instruments and a retractable rod for a magnetometer. Communication with the Earth is provided by a 4 meter Italian antenna. The device does not have solar panels, because at such a huge distance from the Sun they are ineffective. Cassini's energy is provided by 3 radioisotope thermoelectric generators containing a total of almost 33 kilograms of radioactive plutonium. More than half of Cassini's launch weight was fuel. Attached to Cassini is the Huygens probe, intended to land on Titan. It is also designed to photograph the surface of Titan.

Cassini flight

Cassini launched on October 15, 1997. An American Titan 4B rocket was used to launch it into space. But an interesting fact is that when the device was launched into space, it was not directed towards Saturn at all, but rather towards Venus. The thing is that it was decided to use gravity maneuvers, i.e. take advantage of the gravitational field of the planets. Thus, in 1998 and 1999, Cassini orbited Venus, in August 1999 it passed near the Earth at a speed of 69,000 km/h, and in the winter of 2000 it flew past Jupiter, transmitting its photographs to Earth. In January 2004, specialists began to activate the Cassini equipment. Even when approaching Saturn, the device flew 2068 km from one of its satellites, Phoebe.

Pictures of this strange companion transmitted to Earth turned out to be sensational. An irregularly shaped asteroid dotted with craters appeared before the eyes of scientists. When examining the craters, layers of some kind of white substance were discovered on some of them. They assumed it was ice.

In order to finally be in Saturn's orbit, Cassini performed a braking maneuver. This maneuver was a very important and significant calculation, which was placed in advance in the device’s computer. The day of July 1, 2004 has arrived. At 2:11 GMT, Cassini passed the ascending node of the trajectory and overcame the plane of Saturn's rings. After 24 minutes, one of the two braking engines turned on. It worked for 97 minutes, during which time Cassini passed the lowest point above the clouds of Saturn (20,000 km to the clouds). In addition to Phoebe, 8 more satellites were planned for research: Mimas, Dione, Hyperion, Tethys, Rhea, Enceladus and Titan, which became the main object of study among the satellites of Saturn.

Of course, over the 4 years of the mission, Saturn itself will also be studied, because it still holds many mysteries. The rings of Saturn are also being carefully studied. Scientists want to know their composition, gravitational and electromagnetic effects. Great attention will be paid to the planet's atmosphere. This planet has the lowest density among the planets of the solar system. In general, the study project is designed for 4 years, but Cassini’s energy will last for another 200 years, so perhaps it will be able to return to Titan and other satellites more than once. Scientists had an idea to then send the device towards the Kuiper belt, but most likely they will not do this, because... and Saturn and its satellites still keep many secrets.

Illustration copyright PA

The mission of the Cassini probe began back in 1997.

The top photo with our planet in the background was taken in August 1999. The journey of 3 billion km lasted about seven years.

By mid-2004, Cassini finally reached the orbit of Saturn with its characteristic rings. This image was taken on May 7, 2004, when the device was 28.2 million km from the planet:

Illustration copyright NASA

But let's go back a little. Saturn is the sixth planet, counting from the Sun. On the way to it, Cassini flew past another gas giant - Jupiter. This is Jupiter's south pole:

Illustration copyright NASA

There are several dozen orbiting around Saturn. natural satellites himself different sizes and shape, and this is not counting the rings, consisting of countless small particles. The largest of them do not exceed several meters in diameter.

This is Janus, with a large crater visible on it. Photo taken in 2009:

Illustration copyright NASA

The satellites are located at a greater distance from the giant planet than its rings. Janus is one of the closest satellites. For 12 years now, Cassini has been consistently studying the moons of Saturn, and only now got to the rings.

Enceladus is noticeably larger than Janus and located further from Saturn. It's covered in ice. Cassini took this image in October 2015 as it dived beneath Enceladus's south pole:

Illustration copyright NASA

Hyperion is one of the distant moons of Saturn, and Cassini visited it at one of the early stages of the expedition, back in 2005. Hyperion has an irregular shape and is riddled with deep craters:

Illustration copyright NASA

Iapetus is the third largest of Saturn's moons. Just like the Moon in relation to the Earth, Iapetus always faces its planet with the same side. But this is the other side of Iapetus. This photo deserves comparison with the yin-yang symbol:

Illustration copyright NASA

And, of course, the largest of Saturn's moons is Titan. Here he is captured against the backdrop of Saturn itself:

Illustration copyright NASA

In photographs of Titan from space, craters and other relief features cannot be distinguished, as on other satellites of Saturn: they are hidden by its own dense atmosphere celestial body. However, Titan has oceans and land masses, even sharp mountain peaks. To examine them, Cassini sent a special Huygens probe into the satellite’s atmosphere; This is a panoramic shot from it:

Illustration copyright NASA

During the Cassini expedition, Saturn itself was photographed from angles that were previously inaccessible. This is the north pole of Saturn. NASA scientists have not yet understood what is happening there:

Illustration copyright NASA

But there are no recent photographs of Saturn's rings yet. They will appear in the next five months - until Cassini runs out of fuel.

Saturn, one of Cassini's last "masterpieces"

A series of studies of Saturn was started by Pioneer 11, an American-made interplanetary station, in 1973, and continued by two Voyagers.

Thanks to these expeditions, it was possible to find out very, very much about Saturn, its rings and satellites, but the main thing did not work out: to see what it is like, the surface of this mysterious planet. Despite the many photographs and new data received, it was soon decided that it was necessary to start a new project that would allow us to look at this space object from a new perspective. Such a project was the mission of two devices - Cassini and Huygens.

Exploring Saturn: the Cassini-Huygens mission cost America quite a lot of money - about three billion dollars, but it was worth it. Its construction, development and equipment were carried out by very well-known organizations in space exploration circles.

As a result, a device was obtained with a height of 10 meters and a starting weight of 6 tons with 12 scientific instruments on board, an 11-meter rod for the magnetometer and wiring, whose total length is about fourteen kilometers.

To communicate with the Earth, the Italians created a special antenna four meters long. However, the device does not use solar panels, which is understandable: for Saturn it is meaningless. Instead, the role of energy tanks is played by three thermoelectric and radioisotope generators, which contain 33 kilograms of extremely radioactive plutonium, thanks to which the device can operate for about two hundred years.

It's also worth noting that half of Cassini's launch weight is nothing more than fuel, which is needed for braking, entering Saturn orbit, and many other special maneuvers.

Huygens

This device is nothing more than a probe, whose task was to land on Saturn’s moon Titan. Its equipment includes as many as six instruments, allowing for the most detailed study of the surface of the satellite, and a landing camera, which should capture as many landscapes of the little-studied object as possible. This probe weighs about 350 kilograms and is a complement to Cassini: their destinations are very close to each other.

Views of Saturn and its moons from Cassini

Flight

The launch of Cassini and the Huygens attached to it took place in 1997 on October 15. To launch the device into space, a special Titan-4B launch vehicle was needed and additional block for overclocking called "Centaur". For many reasons (there is no direct route to either galaxy), Cassini's initial destination was Venus.

In order to accelerate, the device used the gravitational fields of three planets for two years. However, before meeting the planet - his destination - he was in a kind of suspended animation: all his systems were used only a couple of percent. And so, in the winter of 2000, Cassini finally passed by Saturn, became active and took its first images depicting the “Giant” in such a lunar first quarter, which is practically impossible to see from Earth.

True, before getting as close as possible to the majestic Saturn, Cassini passed by its no less mysterious satellite, Phoebus, whose images were transmitted to Earth. They turned out to be a real sensation: for the first time this object was examined so well. The photographs showed that Phoebus is very similar to an asteroid, that it has an irregular shape, and that its dimensions are approximately two hundred kilometers. It was also discovered that this moon is mostly made of ice, which is very similar to Charon, which means that Phoebus is much closer in structure to comets than to asteroids. This discovery definitely brings humanity closer to unraveling most of the mysteries of the Saturn system.

The most important stage for Cassini it was natural to enter the orbit of the Giant. It took place using a special braking maneuver on July 1, 2004. At that time, he even managed to pass between two rings (F and G). Having encountered obstacles several times, but without significant damage, the device approached Saturn as close as possible and found itself in its orbit. After this achievement, Cassini had to orbit the planet 74 times over four years, covering a vast distance of 1.7 billion kilometers and studying both the surface of Saturn and its moons. Among the latest Special attention definitely focused on Titan - it was decided to make 45 revolutions around it.

Achievements

Among all the achievements that were achieved thanks to Cassini and Huygens, one can particularly highlight not only the fairly detailed photography of the surface of Saturn, but also its numerous satellites: Mimas, Rhea, Phoebus, Titan, Tethys, Dione and Hyperion, as well as Epimetheus . But this is not the end: the Cassini expedition will continue until 2017, which will allow us to learn much more about the Saturn system.

For the past 13 years, the Cassini spacecraft has been silently changing our understanding of the solar system. The Cassini mission, a $3.62 billion joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency, was to study the gas giant Saturn and its many moons. But tomorrow this mission will come to its literally burning end. On Friday, at 7:55 Eastern Time, the Earth will stop receiving data from Cassini, as the device will fall into the atmosphere of Saturn at the speed of a meteor and will be purposefully destroyed. Astronomers have been preparing for this moment for many years.

All of the spacecraft's instruments are still working perfectly, but the long mission has used up almost all the fuel needed to correct the probe's orbital path around Saturn. But rather than simply letting the craft spin out of control and possibly crash somewhere else, the mission control team programmed the probe's computer to enter Saturn's atmosphere to protect the planet's moons and any possible life forms on them.

Despite all the merits of this spacecraft, Cassini, so to speak, has always been an outsider. Its mission was not as flashy as the New Horizons mission that flew past Pluto, or any other mission related to Mars, where the American agency has sent more than one lander and rover over the past couple of decades. Topics related to a mission near Saturn rarely made up major news headlines. However, the lack of hype in no way diminished the scientific importance of the discoveries made by Cassini.

History of Cassini

Formalities aside, it began on October 15, 1997, when Cassini was launched into Earth orbit aboard the Titan IVB/Centaur launch vehicle. The launch was a joint one - the launch vehicle also launched into orbit the Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency. This device was designed to land on Saturn's largest moon Titan, from where it could transmit scientific data to researchers on Earth.

The launch was not without incident. There were people who protested against the launch of Cassini due to fears of pollution from the plutonium fuel on which the spacecraft operates. Before Cassini's launch, physicist Michio Kaku said that if the launch was unsuccessful and the rocket exploded, radioactive material would rain down on people near the launch complex. NASA and government agencies rushed to assure everyone that such a situation was simply impossible. Luckily, the launch actually went off without any problems in the end.

Two spacecraft arrived at Saturn 7 years after their launch from the launch complex at Cape Canaveral. Huygens landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. Since then, Cassini has made many orbits around the planet and its moons. Thanks to him, we got the opportunity to take a fresh look at this system and understand the features of the planet’s rings.

Satellites

From the enormous Titan to the tiny moon Daphnis, Cassini's observations have revealed a lot about the moons of this giant ringed planet. Saturn and its moons can literally be considered a miniature solar system.

Epimetheus

Elena

Hyperion

Mimas, a satellite similar to the Death Star

Pandora

Titan and Tethys (foreground)

Daphnis creating waves inside the rings of Saturn

Pan (similar to dumpling)

Five of the most interesting discoveries of Cassini

It's difficult to list all the contributions Cassini made to planetary science during its 13-year mission, but it's not hard to understand how much the mission means to scientists on Earth. Below are just a few of the most important discoveries accomplished by this probe over more than ten years of its operation.

Geysers on Enceladus

Cassini not only spotted, but also flew through the plumes of liquid water being shot into space from Enceladus's subsurface ocean. The discovery turned out to be surprising. The ocean of the satellite, quite possibly, has the correct chemical composition, essential for life, making it one of the most desirable targets for the search for extraterrestrial life within the solar system.

Titan's "Earth-like" environment

By observing Titan, we were able to learn more about ourselves. Exploration of one of Saturn's largest moons has revealed a complex world of lakes of liquid methane and dunes of hydrocarbons. To the untrained observer, Titan may appear similar to Earth, but it is clearly an alien planet, providing a perfect example of diversity among planetary bodies.

Many satellites of Saturn

Until Cassini was sent to Saturn in 1997, scientists knew only about the existence of 18 moons orbiting the ringed giant. While the spacecraft was moving towards this planet for seven years, researchers discovered 13 more satellites. However, today, thanks to Cassini, we were able to find out that Saturn is the “father” of as many as 53 satellites.

Saturn's hexagonal storm

During its operation, Cassini was able to obtain truly impressive images of Saturn, but perhaps the most impressive and at the same time unique photographs are the photographs of the planet’s poles. We were able to see in detail the hexagonal flow of atmospheric currents surrounding a powerful storm raging at Saturn's north pole. According to NASA, the area of ​​this hurricane is 50 times larger than the area of ​​the average hurricane on Earth.

Empty space between Saturn's rings

Before the mission's culmination, Cassini positioned itself between the planet's rings and Saturn itself. And as it turns out, it’s incredibly calm here. Instead of the expected dust swirls rushing between the planet and the rings, Cassini discovered completely empty space as part of its last orbital flights.

A mission that will be missed

Although, as noted above, the Cassini mission was not as bright as those on Mars, it has proven to be very useful for modern astronomy. Every month, the probe sent back to Earth truly unique, previously unseen images and new scientific data. Many aspiring astronomers have built their careers on the basis of this data.

Completion of the mission will be a real loss for the scientific and pseudo-scientific community. Especially given the fact that, in addition to the probe that will study Jupiter's moon Europa, NASA and other space agencies have no plans, at least in the visible future, to continue studying the horizons of distant worlds of the solar system like Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.