NASA's Cassini probe is about to plunge to its doom — and its fiery death may be visible to telescopes on Earth
NASA's Cassini probe has orbited Saturn for over a decade. This Friday, scientists will steer it into the gas giant's atmosphere. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute After 13 years in orbit around Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is about to plunge itself into the planet's atmosphere and disintegrate. NASA decided to put an end to the mission on Friday because the probe is almost out of fuel. Cassini has provided exquisite details about the second-largest planet in our solar system. Take the hurricanes at Saturn's poles, for example. "These hurricanes are large enough they'd cover about half the continental United States, about 50 times larger than a typical Earth hurricane," says Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Then there are the remarkable, hexagonal-shaped jet s...
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