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One billion miles away...

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[whoosh]

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The Cassini spacecraft
approaches

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its end of mission at Saturn.

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[ ♪ ]

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A story over three decades
in the making

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Linda Spilker: When I first
started working on Cassini

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my daughter Jennifer had
just started kindergarten.

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And now she is married and
has a daughter of her own.

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I worked on the Cassini project

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for almost 30 years.

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And that's an entire
Saturn orbit.

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Part of Cassini's success is
really the tremendous

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international collaboration.

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Earl Maize: We had 3 space

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agencies contributing to this.

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NASA from the United States, ESA
 the European Space Agency,

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and Agenzia Spatziale Italiana,
the Italian space agency,

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all contributing hardware
to this mission.

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Julie Webster: The beauty of

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Cassini is the design.

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It's the largest outer planetary
spacecraft ever built.

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Twelve different instruments
brought from all over

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the United States and Europe.

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The Huygens probe built by
the European Space Agency.

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When you put all that together
it's just a monumental machine.

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Cassini launch October 15, 1997

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3-2-1-

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and liftoff of the
Cassini spacecraft

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on a billion mile trek
to Saturn!

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[rocket roars]

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After a seven-year journey

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Cassini provided scientists

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with the first-ever

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in-depth study of Saturn.

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Uncovering the mysteries

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of its rings,

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atmosphere and moon system.

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And capturing some of

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the most stunning images

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of the ring world.

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Spilker: We turned the
Cassini cameras down

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to look at the rings

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revealing them in a way we had
never seen them before.

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I remember coming back to JPL
early in the morning

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just so I could be there

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and watch those pictures
one by one come down.

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And I felt like I could almost
reach out and touch the rings

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that were right there.

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[ ♪ ]

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We basically tried to
carry in our tool box

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everything you could think of

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to explore the Saturn system.

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Maize: We had been collaborating
with the Europeans

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ever since launch

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to make sure that we had
everything right for Huygens.

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[ soft boom ]

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The Huygens probe

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was dropped onto Titan.

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These are images from
a billion miles away [chuckles]

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on the surface of Titan.

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It's just exhilarating.

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There were boulders.
There were pebbles.

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There's a dry lake bed.

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And I still get goose bumps
just talking about it.

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Webster: After everybody started
getting their science

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the beauty of what
I saw in Cassini

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was they started collaborating
with each other

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and saying "I have a picture
of this part of Titan--

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what does your picture
look like?" you know.

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Spilker: Looking back at what
we were plannning to do

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in those first 4 years, we've
gone so far beyond that!

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Webster: We basically explored
the whole solar system

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contained within the
Saturnian system.

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Maize: We remapped our
investigations to concentrate on

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the questions that
Cassini raised.

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The fact that there's
interplanetary dust

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raining in on Saturn.

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And that collection of icy
satellites and moons.

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The fact we found subsurface
oceans on Enceladus

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which surprised everyone.

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Spilker: Two of our
instruments actually

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sampled the plume of Enceladus

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as we flew through

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tasting the gas,
measuring the particles

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in a way that we hadn't planned.

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Cassini has changed the paradigm

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of where we might look for life.

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That will be one of
her legacies.

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Maize: Thirteen years
of exploring Saturn--

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It really is just a...
just an awesome mission.

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[ ♪ ]

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Mission's End

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September 15, 2017

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory