NASA sent its Cassini spaceship into the Saturn atmosphere early this morning, insuring its radioactive fuel and any possible Earth microbes it carried could never accidentally contaminate a world where life might develop. Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus offer that possibility given their interior oceans, and the Cassini team decided to be certain no unplanned rendezvous between them developed.
The story at the Los Angeles Times recounts some of the highlights of the probe's 13-year exploration of Saturn and its moons, including the Huygens lander that sent back pictures of Titan's surface in 2005 (Huygens was designed to prevent contamination possibilities, making it safe to land).
It also points out how close the mission came to being scrubbed by budget cuts, and how those same kinds of cuts limited the instruments that the ship carried. Maybe the upcoming New Frontiers project and tier of missions should take a hint from NASCAR and decide to sell a little advertising -- space nut Jeff Bezos would probably cough up at least seven figures to have the Amazon logo on the side of a satellite headed to Titan.
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