Where is cassini spacecraft now

The rest of the results, published Thursday in the journal Science, include an unprecedented look at the planet's upper atmosphere and its rings.

Cassini's up-close encounter with Saturn has shed light on "a new element of how our solar system works," said Thomas Cravens, co-author of one of the studies and a University of Kansas professor of physics and astronomy. Saturn's 'ring rain'. During the final plunge, Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer acted as the "nose" of the spacecraft, directly sampling the composition and structure of the atmosphere. It's something that can't be done from orbit, said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the spectrometer.

This was in the hopes of investigating the "ring rain" phenomenon discovered by NASA's Voyager mission in the early s, in which it appeared that the rings were raining material onto the planet and causing changes in the atmosphere.

The spectrometer could determine what material is from the rings and what is part of the atmosphere. According to the spectrometer team, Cassini's nose hit the "jackpot" as it sniffed out the unknown region between the planet and its closest rings. This is key because Saturn's upper atmosphere extends almost to the rings. What Cassini learned about Saturn during its death dive. In a new study, researchers determined that complex organic compounds are raining a chemical cocktail of dust grains from the closest ring, D ring, into the upper atmosphere.

The spectrometer revealed the rings to be composed of water, methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, molecular nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Water ice, along with the newly discovered organic compounds, is falling out of the rings way faster than anyone thought -- as much as 10, kilograms of material per second.

Water ice was expected, but the other organics were not. Changing chemistry. Recovering and examining the data from the last functioning instrument on Cassini wasn't easy, and the process took months. This infalling material likely affects the atmospheric chemistry and the carbon content of Saturn's ionosphere and atmosphere. Because the ring is spinning faster than the planet's atmosphere, the inflow of materials could actually change the carbon and oxygen content of the atmosphere over time, the researchers said.

The spacecraft's handlers wanted to make sure that Cassini — which was nearly out of fuel — never contaminated either moon with microbes from Earth. Huygens was a piggyback probe that rode with Cassini and touched down on Titan's surface in January , pulling off the first-ever soft landing on a world in the outer solar system. Originally published on Space. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!

And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Cassini was, in a sense, a time machine. It revealed the processes that likely shaped the development of our solar system.

What Cassini found at Saturn prompted scientists to rethink their understanding of the solar system. Cassini represented a staggering achievement of human and technical complexity, finding innovative ways to use the spacecraft. Cassini revealed the beauty of Saturn, its rings and moons, inspiring our sense of wonder.

I've been here ever since. You don't have to be a genius to be successful. We fly spacecraft around other planets; how much better can it get? All will serve you well regardless of what you do. Before the mission ended, Cassini was an already powerful influence on future exploration. In revealing that Enceladus has essentially all the ingredients needed for life, the mission energized a pivot to the exploration of "ocean worlds" that has been sweeping planetary science over the past couple of decades.

Europa Clipper will make dozens of flybys of Jupiter's ocean moon to investigate its possible habitability, using an orbital tour design derived from the way Cassini explored Saturn.

Farther out in the solar system, scientists have long had their eyes set on exploring Uranus and Neptune. So far, each of these worlds has been visited by only one brief spacecraft flyby Voyager 2, in and , respectively. Collectively, Uranus and Neptune are referred to as ice giant planets. A variety of potential mission concepts are discussed in a recently completed study, delivered to NASA in preparation for the next Decadal Survey—including orbiters, flybys, and probes that would dive into Uranus' atmosphere to study its composition.

Future missions to the ice giants might explore those worlds using an approach similar to Cassini's mission. Explore the full archive of raw images collected by the Cassini mission from to Illustrations, artwork and infographics that reveal the inner workings of the Cassini mission. Cassini End-of-Mission Press Kit. Cassini Launch Press Kit. Planetary Data System search for Cassini for all available data. Missions Cassini. Cassini Rocket Launch click to enlarge.

Cassini's Gravitational Assits click to enlarge. Cassini's Portrait of Saturn click to enlarge. Back to top.