The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Cassini spacecraft embarked on its final journey as it made its first dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings on Wednesday. This was the first of 22 such dives that the spacecraft will undertake in the next five months, before it heads runs out of fuel.

Cassini was out of communication during the dive because it was using its radio dish as its shield against space rocks. Even the slightest impact with rock or ice can cause massive damage to the spacecraft because of its velocity of over 110,000 km per hour. But, Nasa established communication with the spacecraft again on Thursday.

The plunges are meant to help Cassini gather ultra high-quality data, including pictures of Saturn’s famous rings, with minute details. Nasa is calling the dives Cassini’s “grand finale” because they expect to get ground-breaking information about the planet and its rings during the mission.

“We’re going to top off this mission with a lot of new measurements – some amazing new data,” Athena Coustenis from the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France, told BBC. “We’re expecting to get the composition, structure and dynamics of the atmosphere, and fantastic information about the rings.”

Cassini has been exploring Saturn for almost 13 years now and has undertaken some truly spectacular voyages. It will soon head back towards Earth because it is running out of fuel, and is locked into a collision course with our planet’s atmosphere. This is because scientists do not want it to collide with one of Saturn’s moonsor affect future endeavours or any alien life that exists in the region.

Cassini is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on September 15, at 9.45 am GMT.

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