Monday, May 1, 2017

Signing Off

I've used information and photos from the Cassini space probe orbiting Saturn several times on the blog, because it's been a workhorse satellite and investigated so many fascinating things about one of the solar system's most fascinating planets.

But the probe is running low on fuel, so later this year it will be sent on a course into Saturn's atmosphere to destroy it. Scientists consider that although the possibility of some kind of life on Saturn's moons is faint as far as we know now, and the chance that Cassini would crash into one of the moons in question is slight, there's no reason to risk it.

After all, if there's an intelligent species living under the icy surfaces of one of Saturn's moons, we'd really rather not have our first interaction with them be littering.

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