OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Four CASSINI

I am seriously infatuated with the saga of the Cassini Orbiter which plunged to its death as burning meteor in the atmosphere of Saturn today, with much celebrating and crying among the NASA scientists and support teams who sent it up there and received its data for 13 years.   They even hired a bereavement counselor, so a rumor goes, because the attachment to this unmanned spacecraft was so strong.   People literally built their lives around its regular down loads of imagery and data from the inner and outer reaches of our solar system.  It apparently spent some time in the atmosphere of Mercury on one of its orbits.   Kind of like a real life Wally, Cassini seems to have taken on a personality and virtues associated with its functions, reliability, and the fact that it went places we humans can only imagine and dream about.  Now thanks to Cassini we can see these places more clearly: The Rings of Saturn, and its moons Titan and Enceladus.    Cassini was reaching the end of its orbital capability and would have fallen sooner or later, but scientist actually planned its demise hoping to avoid having it land on Titan or Enceladus which have shown signs of pre-biotic states with possible oceans and rivers.  Cassini could have carried microbes from earth, which would alter the biology of any emerging life.   A series of orbital maneuvers sent it to a fiery death as it descended toward Saturn.

Hurray for Cassini - a fallen hero.

The Cassini Spacecraft orbiting Saturn 

Cassini launching in October 1997.

The orbits of Cassini's Grand Finale