Cassini was and is an amazing program. Goodnight, sweet prince.
A very spectacular mission with great accomplishments. I, like many others, was born such that we have seen some of man’s first great conquests of space...Apollo, just for one. A great time to have experienced.
Fascinating stuff and well worth the expense to extend Mankind’s exploration of his environment.
Too bad the Marxist giveaways of government hacks intent on purchasing votes from everyone with a hand out have resulted in NASA cutbacks.
The same sort of thing has weakened our military capabilities at a time when Russia and China are beefing up.
It was Abraham Lincoln, I believe, who said, “America will destroy itself from within.” (Paraphrase.)
He seems to have been right.
*ping*
I remember watching the launch around 4:30 in the morning. It doesn’t seem all that long ago.
When Cassini was on its way to Saturn, I anticipated that it would soon return real close-ups of the rings, so that we could actually see the ring particles.
This was a naive expectation, since the tremendous gravitation of Saturn precludes the possibility of "going down" and then coming back out. When they announced these Grand Finale maneuvers some time ago, my anticipation was revived, so I'm looking forward to it!
OTOH, I will probably still be disappointed in my hope of seeing seeing the actual ring particles.
The a##hat has put these programs back decades
It will probably crash into a Starbucks.