The Cassini Big Drop happens tomorrow.

They’re calling it the Grand Finale, which is actually not a bad name for what’s going to happen to the Cassini Saturn probe early Friday.  They’re going to use the last of Cassini’s fuel to send the probe into Saturn’s atmosphere, then watch as it transmits data until the planet kills it.  And Saturn will most assuredly kill the Cassini probe. That’s the idea, in fact; there’s an chance that a couple of Saturn’s moons may not be entirely hostile to life, so better to send Cassini right down the pipe than to risk having it contaminate a future potential exo-biological site.

All in all, there are worse ways for a space probe to go out. Continue reading The Cassini Big Drop happens tomorrow.