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Cassini's life passes before its eyes in NY art exhibition
Cassini became a cultural touchstone not just because it was a useful and productive space probe, but because it completed a classic hero's journey. So it's fitting that an art exhibition presented by the WOW visual design studio at HGPRP Gallery in New York City celebrates the life of the probe not in technical, but abstract terms. "It's been said, just before a person dies their life's biggest moments flash before their eye," WOW writes. "Fleeting moments and flashbacks allow viewers to celebrate 20 years of Cassini's achievements in a very personal, non-linear, stylized exhibition."
What's next for NASA as Cassini's mission comes to a close
After nearly two decades in space and 11 years studying Saturn (and its myriad moons), the Cassini spacecraft ended its mission at roughly 6:30 am Eastern on Friday when it slammed into the gas giant's suffocating atmosphere. It was an auspicious end for the $3.4 billion spacecraft, argues Curt Niebur, the program scientist for Cassini at NASA headquarters. "I find it exhilarating, myself," he said. "Instead of just crashing it into something and saying we're done, we're actually going after science questions that we never intended Cassini to answer. And we'll be able to address those. It's fantastic."
Nine of Cassini’s most exciting discoveries about Saturn
Saturn is something of a solar system unto itself (minus the requisite sun). It's surrounded by 53 confirmed moons and another 9 "moonlets," tiny worlds that are among the most exotic and diverse we've seen in this neck of the galaxy. For as much as we could see from our Earth-based telescopes, it was only by getting up close and personal with the system's second largest planet -- by sending a $3.4 billion science machine hurtling 8.88 million miles across interplanetary space -- that we were able to truly observe Saturn. And it's a good thing we did because the scientific discoveries have been near-constant in the 11 years since Cassini left home. We've seen the surface of Titan and watched its liquid methane flow, fall like rain into massive hydrocarbon seas. We saw the tiny icy moon of Enceladus reveal its 101 geysers which shoot hundreds of pounds of water ice and molecular hydrogen into space from a subsurface ocean. Think of the life we'll find in there! And above all, the Cassini mission helped us better understand the atmosphere and global mechanisms of Saturn itself. Here are nine of the most exciting scientific discoveries the Cassini mission brought about.
A lawsuit almost stalled NASA's Cassini mission
Capt. Scott Kelly wasn't kidding when he famously quipped that "space is hard." Even getting to the launch pad can prove to be a daunting challenge. Take the Cassini mission to study Saturn, for example. Despite an investment of $3.4 billion and nearly a decade of development, Cassini wound up being very nearly scuttled at the last minute by protesters who thought they knew better than a federal agency that has put multiple men on the moon. Geez guys, it was just 73 pounds of plutonium riding aboard that Saturn orbiter -- it wouldn't have caused that much damage had something gone horribly wrong at launch.
