Cassini probe at Saturn... (warning -- large images!)

By the way, those who like gas giant cloudscapes for desktop backgrounds etc. should check out this 2010 reprocessed mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot from Voyager I.

xp I have that one saved and sometimes I just break it out and stare at it. In the words of Nigel Tufnel, "too much fuckin' perspective".
Cassini has been one of the greatest scientific triumphs I can remember. I often recall reading about Carolyn Porco back in 1980 when she was a mission specialist on Voyager, and here she is 36 years later heading up my favourite solar system mission of all (well, I guess Voyager rules them all, but Cassini has been the most engaging and involving). I remember saturating our dialup connection watching the live feed from Huygens' descent, now THAT has to be one of the most incredible pieces of engineering and execution we have ever achieved.
I'm sad(ish) for the end but I CANNOT WAIT to see the science from the ring dive orbits.

Sudden flashback memory of watching Huygens' landing at a Starbucks because of the free wi-fi

Mimas
http://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS97/N00275752.jpg

Yeah, it looks like a clay model for 'The Little Prince'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrGAQCq9BMU

And per the video Elvis T posted, the Grand Finale mission began yesterday with the first successful dive between rings and planet

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3032/nasa-spacecraft-dives-between-saturn-and-its-rings/

Sad to see it end over the next few months but damn, just like Galileo was, what a heck of a great mission.

uranus

Four days to go. The finale has been wonderful these past few months.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

The last visit to Titan is complete, it's en route towards a full Saturn plunge.

if the destruction of cassini is to prevent altering the biological environments of the orbiting moons then why did we drop the huygens probe on titan

O heartless cynic.

I for one am sad! But also, hasn't this been one of the most successful NASA missions ever? And I think now they're planning to go to Jupiter's Europa as a result of things they learned on this mission.

Nothing can replace my pure and total love for Voyager, but Cassini comes pretty close

Cassini-Huygens: Preventing Biological Contamination

The Huygens probe which landed on Titan was not sterilized as the chances of finding life were considered insignificant. From further investigations it is evident that chances for life on Titan are higher than initially thought. Although forward contamination in this case is still considered unlikely, it reinforces the need to ensure we protect extra-terrestrial chances of life.

Nice photographic summary of the mission here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/14/science/cassini-saturn-images.html

it's also just cool to blow up your damn spaceship in the atmosphere of a planet billions of miles away xp

Scuttlin' into Saturn

The final images from our nearly 20 years in space are arriving. Unprocessed images are available at: https://t.co/8r5YwwIKVp #GrandFinale pic.twitter.com/46ivtDAdqd

— CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) September 14, 2017

Here is Enceladus, as a crescent, lit by Saturnshine. Our last view. Processed to RGB by me. pic.twitter.com/zr2JsjXj4q

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) September 15, 2017

Here is my first crack at assembling the Enceladus-setting animation. Missing some frames, need to align to make it smoother pic.twitter.com/SARPsYjWze

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) September 15, 2017

Melodramatic, but he's earned it

I made the mistake of imagining what it would be like to be Cassini, watching Saturn grow larger & larger, sending my discoveries home...

— Bobak Ferdowsi (@tweetsoutloud) September 14, 2017

And there it went...

RIP big man

Thx & RIP

the nytimes link james posted has some truly breathtaking images, holy shit

rip cassini, you had a hell of an eye for photography

Was asleep when it happened, but maybe for the best.

Can anyone explain the process behind transmitting these amazing images back to earth?

cassini was towing an ethernet cable hardwired to a computer in houston iirc

once it got past mars the lag meant it couldn't play a decent round of doom anymore

For calstars, copied from an actually useful yahoo answers page:

By radio waves. The transmission is programmed into the computers on Cassini at a particular time and the receiving stations of the Deeps Space network are ready to receive the data stream 46 hours later.

"...The Cassini spacecraft is supported by two major components of the JPL's Interplanetary Network Directorate (IND).

Telecommunications and data acquisition support is provided by the NASA Deep Space Network, the world's largest, most sensitive spacecraft communications network. The DSN consists of three deep space communications complexes located approximately 120 degrees of longitude apart around the world: at Goldstone, California; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. This placement permits continuous communication with deep space spacecraft. The DSN supports Earth orbiter spacecraft communications, as well as, radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploraton of the solar system and the universe.

The DSN provides the vital two-way communications link that guides and controls the Cassini spacecraft. The DSN 34-meter-diameter (112-foot) and 70-meter-diameter antennas are precision pointed, high-gain, parabolic reflector antennas with high power transmitters and ultra low noise (3 Kelvin operating temperature) amplifiers. Each deep space communication complex provides capabilities required to perform telemetry data processing including signal reception and amplification, signal demodulation and decoding, and data packet extraction. A capability to control the spacecraft via commands received from the Cassini project and transmitted from the DSN using 20 kilowatt transmitters is provided. Precision navigation is provided by measurements of signal phase and generation of range data which make use of the ultrastable frequency and timing capabilities of the DSN. All DSN complexes are linked to JPL via a world-wide communications network.

Cassini is also supported by IND's Advanced Multimission Operations System. Known as AMMOS, this system provides a common set of mission operations services and tools to the Cassini mission, as well as to other JPL spaceflight projects. They include capabilities which enable Cassini engineers to do mission planning and analysis, develop pre-planned sets of commands to the spacecraft, perform trajectory calculations for navigating the spacecraft, and process telemetry data (i.e., downlink data from the spacecraft). The AMMOS also provides capabilities for the Cassini Flight team to display and analyze key measurements, such as readings of temperature, pressure, and power, from the spacecraft. Other mission operations services include simulation of telemetry and command data, data management and retrieval of all data types used by the Cassini project, and data archiving.

Brilliant. I will have to read that several times before it makes sense. I didn't know radio waves could carry imagery.

Cheers James!

radio can carry anything digital

I want to visit the Canberra DSN post now, if I ever get to travel there again

Nice in-house profile of members of the team and the build-up to the end.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/3122/cassinis-family-takes-the-plunge/

Can anyone explain...

The telemetry downlink speed wasn't terrible. 14.2 baud, during Saturn orbit phase, if I'm reading this correctly. A state of the art 1991 phone modem.

Oops, 14400 kbit/s.

By comparison, New Horizons, sending back the data from its Pluto flyby, and using both antennas, was limited to 2000 bits per second. Your 1995 AOL dial-up was 28 times faster. Space porn requires patience.

Emptying out the Cassini conference room. (thread)

This is the ⁦@CassiniSaturn⁩ - VIMS Operations Center (read: conference room). For the rest of the month, my job is to dismantle it - making sure the stuff that needs to be destroyed gets destroyed, sorting out the rest. This is going to be fun! pic.twitter.com/fiPQxfRr2e

— Emily J (@EmExAstris) September 5, 2019

Somebody just pointed me to this page, maybe it’s already mentioned upthread or elsewhere:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html