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Cassini: Saturn probe heads towards destruction Cassini: Probe incinerates on entry to Saturn
(about 4 hours later)
The US-led Cassini probe to Saturn will destroy itself in the coming hours. The American-led Cassini space mission to Saturn has just come to a spectacular end.
The $4bn (£3bn) mission is ending 13 years of discoveries at the ringed planet by ditching itself in the atmosphere. Controllers had commanded the probe to be destroyed by plunging into the planet's atmosphere.
With an expected entry speed of 120,000km/h (76,000mph), the spacecraft will rapidly be torn to pieces. It survived for about a minute before being broken apart.
Scientists, however, hope to gain new information on the chemical composition of Saturn's gases just before Cassini loses radio contact with Earth. Cassini had run out of fuel and Nasa had determined that the probe should not be allowed to simply wander uncontrolled among Saturn and its moons.
That is likely to occur just after 04:55 local time here at mission control - the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California (11:55 GMT; 12:55BST). The loss of signal from the spacecraft occurred right on cue. Here at mission control, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, this drop-off was timed at 05:55 PDT (11:55 GMT; 12:55 BST).
It will be a bittersweet moment for the hundreds of mission researchers who have come from all over the world to be in the Los Angeles County town for the occasion. Nasa's Earl Maize addressed fellow controllers: "Congratulations to you all. This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft and you're all an incredible team. I'm going to call this end of mission. Project manager off the net."
Former US space agency chief scientist Ellen Stofan is part of the probe's radar instrument group. The statement brought restrained applause and some comforting embraces.
"We've done amazing science; it's an amazing team. And I think we can celebrate that we've really eked every little bit of science that we could out of the Cassini spacecraft. But then it's what's next? The loss of signal indicated that the probe was tumbling wildly in the planet's gases. It could have survived the violence for no more than about 45 seconds before being torn to pieces.
"We want to go back to Titan, we want to go back to Enceladus; there's so much we don't know about the interior of Saturn, so people have talked about Saturn probe missions. There's a lot more to be done," she told the BBC.
Cassini: A mission of 'astonishing discovery'Cassini: A mission of 'astonishing discovery'
Cassini has revolutionised our understanding of the sixth planet from the Sun. And so ends one of the most successful space missions in history.
It has watched monster storms encircle the globe, and witnessed the delicate interplay of ice particles move through its complex ring system. In its thirteen years at Saturn, Cassini has transformed our understanding of the sixth planet from the Sun.
And then there are those remarkable moons Titan and Enceladus, which host vast bodies of liquid water beneath their icy shells and where scientists say conditions may be favourable for simple life to exist. It has watched monster storms encircle the globe; it witnessed the delicate interplay of ice particles move through the planet's complex ring system; and it revealed extraordinary new insights on the potential habitability of Saturn's moons.
But after taking hundreds of thousands of pictures and other measurements, it is now time for Cassini to retire. Titan and Enceladus were the standout investigations.
It is down to its last few kilos of fuel and the US space agency does not want an uncontrolled probe wandering aimlessly around the outer Solar System. The ship is to be scuttled. The former is a bizarre place where liquid methane rains from an orange sky and runs into huge lakes. Cassini put a small robot called Huygens on Titan's surface in 2005. It returned a remarkable image of pebbles that had been smoothed and rounded by the action of that flowing methane.
"This was the best solution," said Earl Maize, the Nasa Cassini project manager. "We could have parked Cassini way outside the rings, and outside the icy moons. We could even have sent it away from the Saturn system but no-one saw any scientific benefit in that." Cassini also spied what are presumed to be volcanoes that spew an icy slush and vast dunes made from a plastic-like sand.
In contrast, the "death plunge", as it has become known, offers a way to get some unique data. On Enceladus, the observations were no less stunning.
By tightening the probe's orbit so that it flies in between the rings and the planet's atmosphere, which it has been doing since April, researchers have gained new insights on the age of the rings, on the internal structure of Saturn and on the composition of its gas envelope. This moon was seen to spurt water vapour into space from cracks at its south pole. The H20 came from an ocean held beneath the icy shell of Enceladus.
The scientists will now take the ultimate step in these investigations by driving Cassini straight into the planet. When Cassini flew through the water plumes, it showed that conditions in the sub-surface ocean were very probably suitable for life.
Eight instruments will be switched on and reporting conditions for as long as is possible. Today, scientists are already talking about how they can go back with another, more capable probe to investigate this idea further.
This could be 60 seconds; with luck it will be a bit longer. But at some point the probe will not be able to maintain stability as gases rush over its irregular shape. A great many of those researchers have been gathered this week at the nearby campus of the California Institute of Technology. They watched a feed from the control room at JPL on giant screens.
Cassini will start to tumble, break apart and melt - its materials dispersing to become a near-indistinguishable part of the planet it has worked so hard to describe. Jonathan Lunine, from Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, spoke for many when he said: "I feel sad but I've felt sad the whole week; we knew this was going happen. And Cassini performed exactly as she was supposed to and I bet there is some terrific data on the ground now about Saturn's atmosphere."
The last elements to succumb will probably be the iridium casings on the spacecraft's plutonium battery. These casings have very high melting temperatures.
Earth-based telescopes will try to see an entry flash, although the chances seem slim. Unfortunately, the Hubble space telescope will not be in a position to participate.
Saturn's moons: The strange and the wonderfulSaturn's moons: The strange and the wonderful
Cassini has photographed some of Saturn's 62 moons: the two-tone Iapetus (1) with its walnut-like equatorial ridge around its equator; Mimas (2), which has a giant crater that instantly makes everyone think of the "Death Star" from the Star Wars movies; Hyperion (3), which displays clusters of bizarre pock marks akin to a sponge or wasps' nest; Atlas (4), which resembles a flying saucer; the potato-like Prometheus (5); and Pan (6), which has a shape that would not look out of place in a ravioli dish.Cassini has photographed some of Saturn's 62 moons: the two-tone Iapetus (1) with its walnut-like equatorial ridge around its equator; Mimas (2), which has a giant crater that instantly makes everyone think of the "Death Star" from the Star Wars movies; Hyperion (3), which displays clusters of bizarre pock marks akin to a sponge or wasps' nest; Atlas (4), which resembles a flying saucer; the potato-like Prometheus (5); and Pan (6), which has a shape that would not look out of place in a ravioli dish.
Controllers spent Thursday getting the last pictures off Cassini. These included a final look at the rings, at Enceladus and Titan, and the point in the atmosphere being targeted in the plunge.
The cameras will be off for the plunge. At a data rate of less than 30 kilobits per second, there is simply no point in trying to feed images in the end phase of the mission.
The mood here in Pasadena is a subdued one. Normally, the big occasions at JPL will mark "beginnings" - the landing of a rover on Mars, or a satellite's arrival in orbit at a planet.
Some scientists admit to having already shed tears over the imminent end of the Cassini mission; others are in no doubt that the emotion will overcome them when radio contact is lost.
But all are convinced that with Cassini, they have been part of something very special.
"The discoveries at Enceladus are among the most astonishing ever made for planetary science," said Nasa project scientist Linda Spilker. "To discover there is an ocean world so tiny with the possibility of life so far from the Sun has opened up our paradigm of where you might look for life, both in our own Solar System and in the exoplanet systems beyond."
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint endeavour of Nasa, and the European and Italian space agencies.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint endeavour of Nasa, and the European and Italian space agencies.
BBC News will have live coverage of the ending of the mission on both TV and radio. Inside Science ran a preview of the climax on Radio 4. A Horizon documentary will also review the mission and the final hours in a special programme to be broadcast on Monday 18 September at 21:00 BST on BBC Two. And you can still watch the Sky At Night programme Cassini: The Gamechanger on the iPlayer. BBC News has live coverage of the ending of the mission on both TV and radio. Inside Science ran a preview of the climax on Radio 4. A Horizon documentary will also review the mission and the final hours in a special programme to be broadcast on Monday 18 September at 21:00 BST on BBC Two. And you can still watch the Sky At Night programme Cassini: The Gamechanger on the iPlayer.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmosJonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos