Cassini, or full name Cassini-Huygens, a NASA spacecraft, ended its 13 year flight around Saturn this past Thursday. The craft took a total of 293 orbits around Saturn over a 13 year period, and produced enough data for 3,000 scientific papers.
Amongst a plethora of info and data it sourced, we can thank Cassini for the discovery of Saturn's potentially hospitable moons. Which is actually why NASA's team of scientists carefully planned for the crafts destruction; to ensure any potential life on those planets are not harmed from an accidental crash. Instead, Cassini's last moments were a planned plunge into Saturn's atmosphere where it is assumed to have fallen apart and now lays dormant. Only after it fired of a final signal to earth, sending back the important data from its last days. You can watch the craft's last moments above, and watch how the NASA mission control crew reacted below.
