Cassini's Final Plunge

[todofwar]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2085745-cassini-gears-up-for-final-fiery-plunge-into-saturns-atmosphere/

Looks like the clock's running out, about a year left. Still, this will be exciting to watch.

[Shpaget]

Interesting how the main reason to destroy Cassini in the atmosphere of Saturn is to prevent contamination of Titan and Enceladus and interfere with possible life there.

What about sentient cloud beings floating in Saturns atmosphere?

[Basto]

13 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Interesting how the main reason to destroy Cassini in the atmosphere of Saturn is to prevent contamination of Titan and Enceladus and interfere with possible life there.

What about sentient cloud beings floating in Saturns atmosphere?

Screw those guys!  

Seriously though, I suspect it is much less likely anything will survive a high speed entry into Saturn's atmosphere than it would on the moons. 

[blorgon]

My favorite mission. Excited for the new data it will bring, but sad that there'll be a day when I can't look up "new Cassini images".

[YNM]

Guess actually it's not because they are afraid of Cassini screwing any lifeforms there, just... A hunk of metal hitting thin ice at a few km/s doesn't sound good. Better hitting very thick gas at tens of km/s.

Farewell, Cassini ! Thank you for three whole decades !

Edited April 27, 2016 by YNM

[RainDreamer]

I wonder how far it can get inside and still be able to send back images.  Would it eventually reach the core, whatever it is for gas giant? Or would it get caught by the material in between and get swept around?

[KerbMav]

Once again an event for which I wished we had a second probe to watch the first one dive in!

(OT: Does KSP's Jool have science in upper and lower atmosphere ... ?)

[cantab]

3 hours ago, KerbMav said:

(OT: Does KSP's Jool have science in upper and lower atmosphere ... ?)

Yes it does. Returning those experiments to Kerbin is quite the challenge.

[Steel]

4 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

I wonder how far it can get inside and still be able to send back images.  Would it eventually reach the core, whatever it is for gas giant? Or would it get caught by the material in between and get swept around?

Not long at all, and it would be crushed well before it reached the core even if it did have a heat shield.

[fredinno]

On 2016-04-27 at 9:04 AM, YNM said:

Guess actually it's not because they are afraid of Cassini screwing any lifeforms there, just... A hunk of metal hitting thin ice at a few km/s doesn't sound good. Better hitting very thick gas at tens of km/s.

Farewell, Cassini ! Thank you for three whole decades !

If planetary protection was not a concern, hitting it into Enceledus would allow for spectroscopy experiments of the impact plume by space telescopes.

[PB666]

9 hours ago, Steel said:

Not long at all, and it would be crushed well before it reached the core even if it did have a heat shield.

Well and transmitting back would not be a problem at all. . .

[YNM]

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

If planetary protection was not a concern, hitting it into Enceledus would allow for spectroscopy experiments of the impact plume by space telescopes.

I don't think we want a hole to be created in the ice shell... But I haven't run the numbers so I could be wrong in determining what would happen if Cassini hit Enceladus' surface at 90 deg with typical flyby velocity.

[RainDreamer]

19 hours ago, Steel said:

Not long at all, and it would be crushed well before it reached the core even if it did have a heat shield.

I was actually wondering about what happened to the crushed remains and whether that gets to the core eventually or scattered around in the gas storms.

[Steel]

4 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

I was actually wondering about what happened to the crushed remains and whether that gets to the core eventually or scattered around in the gas storms.

Ah OK, there's an interesting description of what is theorised to have happened to the Galileo probe as it went into Jupiter on its Wikipedia page which might help with that.

TL;DR: it gets essentially atomised on the way down

Edited April 30, 2016 by Steel