Far Beats

Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on 15 October 1997, Cassini had been active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn, studying the planet and its system since entering orbit on 1 July 2004. The voyage to Saturn included flybys of Venus (April 1998 and June 1999), Earth (August 1999), the asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Jupiter (December 2000). Its mission ended on 15 September 2017, when Cassini flew into Saturn's upper atmosphere and burned up at a very high temperature, in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, some of which have active environments that could potentially bear life. (At that point Cassini lacked sufficient power to leave the Saturn system so it could only be left in orbit where it might collide with a moon or be destroyed). The mission is widely perceived to have been successful beyond expectation. Cassini-Huygens has been described by NASA's Planetary Science Division Director as a "mission of firsts", that has revolutionized human understanding