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A Billion Miles Under Nuclear Energy And the winner is…Cassini-Huygens, in triple overtime. (Updated) By NEI Digital Team September 11, 2017 The spaceship conceived in 1982 and launched fifteen years later, will crash into Saturn on September 15, after a mission of 19 years and 355 days, powered by the audacity and technical prowess of scientists and engineers from 17 different countries, and 72 pounds of plutonium. The mission was so successful that it was extended three times; it was intended to last only until 2008. Since April, the ship has been continuing to orbit Saturn, swinging through the 1,500mile gap between the planet and its rings, an area not previously explored. This is a good maneuver for a spaceship nearing the end of its mission, since colliding with a rock could end things early. Cassini will dive a little deeper and plunge toward Saturn’s surface, where it will transmit data until it burns up in the planet’s atmosphere. The radio signal will arrive here early Friday morning, Eastern time. A NASA video explains. In the years since Cassini has launched, space nuclear power has advanced. NASA is now working on a reactor that would power a base on Mars. The dramatic end is deliberate; it will eliminate the possibility that the probe could crash on a planet that could support any form of life that stowed away on the spacecraft. Cassini took seven years to get to Saturn, and then transmitted dramatic pictures of the rings. It confirmed an ocean of water on the moon Enceladus, raising the possibility of life there. It found new rings. Its findings advanced our understanding about the origin of the rings and the nature of the planet.
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