Google decided to commemorate NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Wednesday, which began its final journey into orbiting Saturn’s moon Titan before colliding and crashing into Saturn’s atmosphere. The Cassini mission, a joint project of NASA, the Italian Space Agency (ISA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), ventured its journey almost 20-years-ago and since then more than 15 countries came in its support.
The Cassini spacecraft was named after Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who allegedly discovered Saturn’s division between the rings and its satellites. Termed as “The Grand Finale”, the spacecraft is said to end its almost two-decade-long voyage on September 15 this year, but before ending its exploration Cassini will take more screenshots of the planet and let us know more of Saturn’s rings and the planet.
The Cassini mission continues to help scientists and discoverers get a better understanding of Saturn’s mass, origin and its rings and most importantly, scrutinise the interiors of the gas giant. To mark Cassini’s successful 2.2 billion-mile journey to Saturn, Google decided to acknowledge and commemorate the probe by releasing a doodle on the spacecraft.
The official twitter handle of Cassini announced Cassini’s final journey:
We’re approaching #Saturn over the northern hemisphere in advance of first #GrandFinale dive through gap between the planet and its rings. pic.twitter.com/RaFA4C0FOw
— CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) April 26, 2017
Our first #GrandFinale orbit will take us over #Saturn’s north pole and offer our best look yet at its hex storm. https://t.co/1ZKp8o1bY6 pic.twitter.com/ajMIUSQRW6
— CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) April 25, 2017
The doodle features an animated version enigmatic playful Cassini swooping between Saturn’s rings and taking snaps of the giant Saturn as it gazes back at it.
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