NASA's Cassini Mission is at an end, but here's what it found.

In 2004, NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens satellite probe on a mission to view and observe Saturn and its moons, sending mountains of information and images back to NASA and the discoveries the probe made changed the way we see the planets in our own solar system.

1 – We all know what area 51 is, there have been many conspiracy theories about the US governments secret base harbouring Aliens. One of the biggest questions mankind has is.. 'is their life beyond earth?' Well Cassini has brought us one step closer to understanding this question.
On a fly by Enceladus, Cassini flew through a geyser plume that reached miles into space. The existence of this indicates that there are hydrothermal vents under the ice with a huge ocean. On earth, thousands of organisms have been discovered living near hydrothermal vents deep under water. So it is possible alien life could exist on the small moon. They just wont be grey with big black eyes. More like bacteria and small animal life.

2 – Here in the UK we have a place called the 'Lake District'. Its an area in the north of England that is very hilly and are a lot of lakes. Until Cassini's mission we didn't know about any other lakes on any planet in our own solar system. That is until Cassini's flyby of Titan where is observed large land masses with lakes and rain. Though not like what you would get here... they are made up of Liquid Methane, so not only would it be cold but will smell bad too.

3 – When we think of Saturn, In particular its rings. We think of them as a flat disc. During Cassini's mission. It flew very close to Saturn. In between the planet and its inner rings. It found formations in the rings that are nearly 2 miles thick and its rings are shrinking, suggesting that it will eventually disappear and form another moon.

4 – Jupiter is well known for its red spot. A storm system that could engulf our planet several times over. But in 2010, Cassini recorded the biggest storm in our solar system to date. With huge amounts of static electricity detected it would put our worst thunder storms here to shame. The storm was so powerful the temperatures spiked near 150* turning the cold planet very hot. The storm lasted over a year and was nearly 200'000 miles long and 15'000 miles wide.

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5 – Only one other planet in our solar system has a Hexagon shaped cloud formation which can be found on Neptune's north pole. This was recorded by the Voyager missions during a sling shot manoeuvre to speed the probe up. Saturn has a similar Hexagon cloud formation on its poles. This is the first Time NASA have been able to observe this phenomena in detail . But are still unsure how it is formed. Plus it shifts colour and has done so twice during Cassini's mission, from a pale blue to a golden brown colour. Until another mission to Saturn, Scientist can only come up with theories of why it does this.

On September 15th 2017, Cassini ran out of fuel and burnt up into Saturn's Atmosphere bringing an end to this epic mission. JPL have already hinted at a new probe to explore Saturn again in greater detail, but they did not say how and when. But they definitely said, ''it's not the end for exploring Saturn''.

Thanks for reading.

@TechMojo

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