Saturn spacecraft begins science swan-song

By Alexandra Witze

After 13 years exploring Saturn and its moons, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has just 5 months left to live. But it will go out with a scientific bang.

On 22 April, Cassini will slingshot past Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, for the last time. Four days later, the probe will hurtle into the unexplored region between the giant planet and its rings. Cassini will thread that 2,400-kilometre-wide gap 22 times before its kamikaze dive into Saturn’s atmosphere on 15 September.

This unprecedented journey promises to yield fresh discoveries for the venerable spacecraft. “It will be like a whole new mission,” says Linda Spilker, Cassini’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “There are fundamental new scientific measurements to make.”

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