LOS ANGELES Nike Air Max 93 Soldes , Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- After a 13-year tour of Saturn, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Cassini spacecraft made a fateful plunge into the atmosphere of the ringed planet early Friday morning, ending the mission just one month shy of its 20th launch anniversary.
"Earth received @CassiniSaturn's final signal at 7:55 a.m. ET (1155 GMT). Cassini is now part of the planet it studied," Cassini's team said on Twitter Friday morning.
The last signal was received by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna complex in Canberra, Australia.
Head of spacecraft operations Julie Webster called "loss of signal," followed by Project Manager Earl Maize announcing "end of mission" as the spacecraft began to break up in Saturn's atmosphere.
"Congratulations to you all Nike Air Max Plus Soldes ," Maize told the team. "It's been an incredible mission, incredible spacecraft, and you are an incredible team."
The probe was running low on fuel, so the 13-year tour of the Saturn system mission had to end.
The spacecraft made a deliberate plunge into Saturn's atmosphere to avoid the small possibility of it crashing into a potentially habitable moon, in particular Enceladus.
"It's a bittersweet, but fond Nike Air VaporMax Soldes , farewell to a mission that leaves behind an incredible wealth of discoveries that have changed our view of Saturn and our solar system, and will continue to shape future missions and research," Michael Watkins, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement.
Traveling at approximately 113,000 km per hour Nike Air VaporMax Plus Soldes , Cassini entered Saturn's atmosphere at an altitude of about 1,915 km above the planet's estimated cloud tops about 3:31 a.m. PDT (1031 GMT), according to JPL's choreographed plan.
Then, the spacecraft stopped communicating with Earth one minute later.
Within three more minutes, Cassini's 12 scientific instruments were torn apart. Then they melted, and vaporized.
Due to the travel time for radio signals from Saturn Nike Air VaporMax Utility Soldes , which changes as both Earth and the ringed planet travel around the Sun, events took place there 83 minutes before they were observed on Earth.
This means that, the signal from that event would not be received on Earth until 83 minutes later.
Cassini has made groundbreaking scientific observations of Saturn.