Space probe prepares for final mission: suicidal dive into Saturn’s atmosphere

NASA SCIENTISTS are preparing to kill off the Cassini space probe with a spectacular suicidal dive into Saturn’s atmosphere today.

The 22ft robot craft will break into fragments and burn up as it ploughs into the ringed planet’s cloud tops, ending a 20-year mission that cost £2.9bn.

Cassini was launched in 1997 and took seven years to travel two billion miles to Saturn, before embarking on a 13-year journey of discovery that delivered a wealth of scientific data on the planet and its moons. Now with the spacecraft running out of fuel, and soon to become impossible to steer, controllers have chosen to bring the mission to a fiery end.

Scientists expect to lose contact with the probe at around 12.55pm UK time today as Cassini begins to feel the effects of drag from Saturn’s atmosphere and starts to tumble, causing its dish antenna to lose sight of Earth.

Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “The spacecraft’s final signal will be like an echo.

“It will radiate across the solar system for nearly an hour and a half after Cassini itself has gone.”

Open University planetary scientist Professor Simon Green, who helped develop Huygens’ surface science package, said: “The Cassini-Huygens mission has transformed our understanding of the second largest planet in our solar system, Saturn.”