Cassini has crashed into Saturn

[ccozan]

Final Images ( choose Grand Finale )

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images/

I wonder if it got destroyed or just lost the signal due to the atmosphere.

Amazing times to live.

[liberte82]

Incredible. It's easy to forget that it's not so long ago that our not-too-distant ancestors looked up at the sky and noticed that these stars wandered in the sky a little bit differently from the others. What they would have thought if they'd have known that we would be sending probes to these places and sending images home.

[jlebrech]

we've probably seeded it now with bacteria from earth.

[mavhc]

That's why they crashed it into Saturn, to avoid possibly infecting the moons which might have life

[pavel_lishin]

That's actually an interesting question - are there layers of Saturn's atmosphere where Earth-borne bacteria could survive? Someplace where the temperature and pressure are capable of supporting life, and where there might be some nutrients for them to feed on?

[avenoir]

I remember reading that the Mars rover went through "planetary protection" which is basically a decontamination process. I wonder if a similar thing happened here and how thorough this process is.

[satysin]

Could bacteria survive for 20 years in space?

[ekianjo]

Not sure if a fireball trailing through another planet's atmosphere leaves much behind.

[idlewords]

Better Saturn than Enceladus. That was the point of the exercise.

[artmageddon]

I assume it would just be with tardigrades, but can they even survive / thrive on Saturn?

[simion314]

The probe burned with very high temperature, not sure any organic chemical can survive.

[Froyoh]

Let the new experiement begin.

[merricksb]

Earlier discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256418

[liberte82]

This links to the same post

[pavel_lishin]

No more than are harmed every day by regular space debris impacting Saturn. Plus, we're fairly sure there are no people there.

[danielharrison]

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