NASA's Cassini orbiter has done a hero's work since arriving at Saturn in 2004, but the aging spacecraft is reaching the end of its life. Cassini rapidly running out of fuel, so NASA scientists have to decide what kind of funeral to give it. Today, NASA has revealed many details of Cassini's final mission, what NASA is calling Cassini's "Grand Finale." According to NASA, the spacecraft will follow a series of orbits that bring it between Saturn and its rings until finally it will plunge into the planet's atmosphere and die.

It might not seem like a fitting end to such an important spacecraft, but retiring Cassini this way is important to avoid accidentally crashing on one of Saturn's moons. Some of these moons—like Enceladus with its underground water oceans and Titan with its methane lakes and rivers—could potentially be home to primitive extraterrestrial life, and we can't risk contaminating them with the microbes on Cassini.

Instead, the Grand Finale will safely dispose of Cassini by sending it into Saturn's atmosphere. But first, Cassini will make 22 flybys of the planet in the narrow region between Saturn and its rings, which has never been done before. In the process it will collect mountains of unique data that could revolutionize our view of Saturn.

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This mission does come with some risk, which is why NASA waited until the very end before undertaking it. Some material from Saturn's rings is always falling toward the surface of the planet, and at the speeds Cassini is traveling, a particle the size of a grain of sand could seriously damage the spacecraft. A really bad impact could destroy individual instruments or disable or destroy the entire craft.

NASA hopes this doesn't happen, and their current understanding of Saturn and its rings predicts that it won't. NASA gives the mission about a 98 percent chance of success, and is prepared for the loss of any equipment. Even if Cassini is completely lost, its trajectory will send it into Saturn anyway so there's no risk to Titan or Enceladus.

Saturn and its rings, as photographed by Cassini. In this photo, the sun is directly behind Saturn, while Earth is visible as a small dot just below and to the right. NASA/JPL-Caltech

And if the mission is successful, there's a great deal we could learn. For starters, these orbits will bring Cassini closer to Saturn's rings than it has ever been, so it will be able to study their age and composition. There's also a chance that Cassini could grab the first ever photograph of one of the individual rocks that make up the rings.

Beyond that, Cassini will spend its remaining time studying Saturn itself, including its atmosphere and magnetic fields. Cassini will learn how deep Saturn's surface winds extend into the planet, the composition and size of Saturn's core, and even how long a day actually lasts on Saturn, which can only be observed from looking at the wobble in Saturn's magnetic field. Because the rings actually block much of Saturn's magnetic field, this mission gives Cassini the first real chance to study them in depth.

After 22 orbits, Cassini will plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15. The thick atmosphere will disintegrate the spacecraft, but before that happens Cassini will record everything it experiences and transmit as much of it as possible back to Earth. In the final few minutes, Cassini will give us its last few bits of data before going out in a literal blaze of glory. And here on Earth we'll have gained an invaluable trove of Saturn's secrets that scientists will study for decades.

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