The probe “Cassini” in a step from destruction

The spacecraft reached the “line of death” with Saturn.

Last night the probe Cassini moved closer to Titan, made the last gravity-assist maneuver and came to direct the trajectory of the collision with the Saturn in which he will burn on Friday, September 15.

“You can say that Cassini maintained a very long relationship with this moon of Saturn, seeing her about once a month for more than 10 years. Their last rendezvous mixed feelings, but in spite of this separation, a true Titan in recent times will help the probe to reach a new orbit,” said the Earl maze, head of the mission Cassini NASA.

Life Cassini will break very soon – last week he started the last 22 revolutions around Saturn during the last phase of the mission, named “the finale of the Opera”. Five days later, NASA probe enters the dense layers of the atmosphere of Saturn and burn up, transferring the information to the Ground until the last second.

Get the latest pictures of Saturn’s rings, Cassini last night was the last time he became friends with the Titan, whose gravity will change the trajectory of the probe and send it to the last rendezvous of the “Lord of the rings.” NASA called this gravity assist “a farewell kiss”, because after the fate of the “Cassini” will change nothing.

According to NASA, the probe flew at a distance of approximately 119 kilometers above the surface of Titan, having received the farewell pictures and gathering the latest data on the composition of its atmosphere and surface. This information and other scientific data will be downlinked in near future and memory “Cassini” will be cleared before he will start his last “dive” into the atmosphere of Saturn.

Tomorrow some tools Cassini will begin to work in such a way that the information collected will be transmitted to Earth in real time, allowing the probe to conduct scientific observations in fact until the time of his death. Scientists expect this sad event will happen next Friday, at about 15.00 in Kyiv.

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