CASSINI MISSION TO SATURN: ITS FIERY DEATH AND THE AWE INDUCING STATS.

ICHEOKU says the wonderment of science at its best, that a man made super machine could travel 932 million miles at 77,000 mph from this planet earth to another planetary space; and survived there for another 13 years. It wrecked in 5 billion miles of travel through the rings of Saturn, orbiting it 294 times before finally being vaporized through a controlled crash and burn orbital maneuver. 

Cassini was indeed a thing of beauty, a stellar product of the extraordinary ingenuity of some brilliant minds; and it handsomely rewarded the world of Planetary and Rock Science. 

The numbers associated with Cassini are simply mind blowing: it took a 7 years of traveling, at a speed of 77,000 miles per hour, to traverse the distance of 945 million miles between earth and Saturn. Once aligned within the rings of Saturn, it clocked in another 5 billion miles during  its 13 years of life orbiting and observing Saturn. The Saturn probe rocketed off in October 1997 and reached the rings of Saturn in July 2004.  

Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine the science that went into building this super machine; factoring in the rocket fuel that sustained the engines for that long and length of travel; the communication instruments that kept on going for the duration of the mission and the distance it took to bring back to earth all the information mined while observing Saturn, transmitting bits of data at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second,which took 83-and-a-half minutes to cover the distance back to earth. 

During the course of its 13-year mission, Cassini executed 2.5 million commands, carried out 360 engine burns, completed 162 targeted flybys of Saturn's moons, took more than 453,000 images and discovered six previously unknown moons, covering 4.9 billion miles since launch in 1997. Most important, the spacecraft collected 635 gigabits of data resulting in nearly 4,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers. 

How they did it, ICHEOKU cannot begin to conceptualize; only to say that the team are exceptionally awesome. They are science par excellence and brilliance personified. The Cassini Project was indeed a true mission accomplished and a testament to what the human brain could and is capable of accomplishing. 

The bus-sized spacecraft was fast running out of rocket fuel and crashing just anywhere was not an option acceptable to the mission controllers and they had to force crash and burn it Saturn's atmosphere all in the name of protecting the planet's natural satellites. In NASA's own words explaining their action: Cassini is ending its 13-year tour of the Saturn system with an intentional plunge into the planet to ensure that Saturn's moons — in particular Enceladus, with its subsurface ocean and signs of hydrothermal activity — remain pristine for future exploration. 

Continuing, "This morning, a lone explorer, a machine made by humankind, finished its mission 900 million miles away. A superb machine in an amazing place, doing everything we could possibly do to reveal the mysteries and secrets of our solar system. As you just heard, the signal from the spacecraft is gone and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft. I hope you're all deeply proud of this amazing accomplishment. Congratulations to you all. This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft and you're all an incredible team. I'm going to call this the end of mission." With these words by Project Manager Earl Maize, the Cassini Mission to Saturn came to an end and it was indeed a mission accomplished. ICHEOKU says the world is proud.