One billion miles away...
[whoosh]
The Cassini spacecraft
approaches
its end of mission at Saturn.
[ ♪ ]
A story over three decades
in the making
Linda Spilker: When I first
started working on Cassini
my daughter Jennifer had
just started kindergarten.
And now she is married and
has a daughter of her own.
I worked on the Cassini project
for almost 30 years.
And that's an entire
Saturn orbit.
Part of Cassini's success is
really the tremendous
international collaboration.
Earl Maize: We had 3 space
agencies contributing to this.
NASA from the United States, ESA
 the European Space Agency,
and Agenzia Spatziale Italiana,
the Italian space agency,
all contributing hardware
to this mission.
Julie Webster: The beauty of
Cassini is the design.
It's the largest outer planetary
spacecraft ever built.
Twelve different instruments
brought from all over
the United States and Europe.
The Huygens probe built by
the European Space Agency.
When you put all that together
it's just a monumental machine.
Cassini launch October 15, 1997
3-2-1- 
and liftoff of the
Cassini spacecraft
on a billion mile trek
to Saturn!
[rocket roars]
After a seven-year journey
Cassini provided scientists
with the first-ever
in-depth study of Saturn.
Uncovering the mysteries
 of its rings,
atmosphere and moon system.
And capturing some of
the most stunning images
of the ring world.
Spilker: We turned the
Cassini cameras down
to look at the rings
revealing them in a way we had
never seen them before.
I remember coming back to JPL
early in the morning
just so I could be there
and watch those pictures
one by one come down.
And I felt like I could almost
reach out and touch the rings
that were right there.
[ ♪ ]
We basically tried to
carry in our tool box
everything you could think of
to explore the Saturn system.
Maize: We had been collaborating
with the Europeans
ever since launch
to make sure that we had
everything right for Huygens.
[ soft boom ]
The Huygens probe
was dropped onto Titan.
These are images from
a billion miles away [chuckles]
on the surface of Titan.
It's just exhilarating.
There were boulders.
There were pebbles.
There's a dry lake bed.
And I still get goose bumps
just talking about it.
Webster: After everybody started
getting their science
the beauty of what
I saw in Cassini
was they started collaborating
with each other
and saying "I have a picture
of this part of Titan--
what does your picture
look like?" you know.
Spilker: Looking back at what
we were plannning to do
in those first 4 years, we've
gone so far beyond that!
Webster: We basically explored
the whole solar system
contained within the
Saturnian system.
Maize: We remapped our
investigations to concentrate on
the questions that
Cassini raised.
The fact that there's
interplanetary dust
raining in on Saturn.
And that collection of icy
satellites and moons.
The fact we found subsurface
oceans on Enceladus
which surprised everyone.
Spilker: Two of our
instruments actually
sampled the plume of Enceladus
as we flew through
tasting the gas,
measuring the particles
in a way that we hadn't planned.
Cassini has changed the paradigm
of where we might look for life.
That will be one of
her legacies.
Maize: Thirteen years
of exploring Saturn--
It really is just a...
just an awesome mission.
[ ♪ ]
Mission's End
September 15, 2017
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute
of Technology
