Farewell to Cassini

[SomemuttupNorth]

As of writing, about 10 1/2 hours remain until the Cassini spacecraft conducts its final, destructive dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, completing its Grand Finale and ending a 20 year mission to Saturn and its many moons, including delivering the Huygens lander onto Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

 

 

The final mission countdown can be viewed here, showing realtime data about the location and speed of Cassini

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/saturn-tour/where-is-cassini-now/

 

[Unabletony]

It may be sappy, but I somehow always feel sad for these pieces of technology, as if they were living, and not just a piece of tech.

[WanderingGhost]

9 minutes ago, Unabletony said:

It may be sappy, but I somehow always feel sad for these pieces of technology, as if they were living, and not just a piece of tech.

 

Because someone/somegroup designed this, men and women put time into testing it, building it, making sure this worked, it helped pay for a family's meals and trips to those that worked on it, they then got it to space and have spent years working on it and reading it's data. Some involved, this may have been just a job, to others, this may have been their dream, their want's, their desires.

 

A space craft, a ship, a building, people put their time and energy into these. These are all things that required hard work to achieve and time and effort and that it comes to an end, especially to be in essence thrown away and destroyed like just another piece of trash, yeah, it's kinda sad.

 

And that doesn't count if you go into what some might call oddball land where you talk of in essence people literally having built a little of themselves into the project and bonds they may have with it. Similar to if you have a favourite pen or pencil that is just run of the mill or of 3 controllers in your house for your preferred system only one has the right feel and do well with, it's the same as the rest, but it feels different, writes better, only one the buttons and sticks move just the right way.

[RipNuN2]

A new opera was written for this.

 

 

[YukikazeFortunateBeaver]

ive only heard about cassini now...but it makes me so sad...

[Estimated_Prophet]

1 hour ago, SomemuttupNorth said:

As of writing, about 10 1/2 hours remain until the Cassini spacecraft conducts its final, destructive dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, completing its Grand Finale and ending a 20 year mission to Saturn and its many moons, including delivering the Huygens lander onto Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

 

 

The final mission countdown can be viewed here, showing realtime data about the location and speed of Cassini

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/saturn-tour/where-is-cassini-now/

 

 

Something to do to break the monotony when I get home from work. Watched the landing of  Curiosity when that happened; serious awesomeness;

 

 

[pikohan]

4 hours ago, LycorisFubuki said:

ive only heard about cassini now...but it makes me so sad...

 

It's definitely a little sad to see it go. This thing has been around so long I remember reading about the launch in elementary school.

 

It's mind-boggling how so much technology has come and gone in the past twenty years, but the journey of this piece of 90s tech is just as amazing today as it was in 1997.

[Chobittsu]

One last image was beamed back from Cassini in the form of a .gif