h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Cassini Saturn tweets:
Join us at 1 p.m. ET today to see the #GrandFinale science still in store, on http://youtube.com/nasajpl Tag Qs #askNASA

NASA:
#10Things to know about @CassiniSaturn’s glorious demise on Friday. #grandfinale https://go.nasa.gov/2f0PiLc

Apparently, NASA are taking a page from the Hotblack Desiato playbook. There's going to be a crash, because. . . why not?

Katie Mack‏Verified account @AstroKatie
Important facts about @CassiniSaturn's #GrandFinale, including the fact that it won't so much "burn" as "melt furiously while glowing"

Also, boybeing meets girlbeing under those rings, and then they explode for no adequately explored reason. My physicist sister lets kids hurl pumpkins from a trebuchet, who am I to criticise? Geeks love watching things go boom and splat.

This is space history, and would vastly entertain the 10th Doctor. If you're feeling poetical about it all, you're not alone. Please enjoy this opera aria, sung magnificently by the USS Voyager's holographic doctor. Robert Picardo has a superb voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPnZQIkSNmU

And go watch the show on Friday.

Right now:
Distance from Saturn
685,873.196 mi
(1,103,806.254 km)
Velocity relative to Saturn
7,710.867 mph
(12,409.452 km/h)
Velocity relative to Earth
61,451.957 mph
(98,897.449 km/h)

But it was updating as I copied...counting down to its death...sniff...

Kind of the saddest statement:

'Because Saturn is so far from Earth, Cassini will have been gone for about 83 minutes by the time its final signal reaches the Deep Space Network's Canberra station in Australia on Sept. 15, 2017.'

Awww...now you know you have to watch it. Out of respect. Well done, little robot...

Here's the timeline of final events:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/grand-finale/cassini-end-of-mission-timeline/

And go look on Twitter, #GrandFinale. Those pictures are awesome.

Unless of course it collides with a giant black monolith

True.

excuse me while I have a little

*sniff*

The European space probe Huygens still lives on Titan to where it was carried by Cassini in 2005

(albeit dormant for the moment but It just needs fresh batteries )

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1609.html

Saturnians = Oi! just co's your planets full, don't go dumping your trash on us

I once managed to convince someone that Huygens was pronounced "huge ones' in English. I just wish I'd been at their next science class.

Naughty.

Have you heard? It's in the stars
Next July we collide with Mars.
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party, a swell party
A swelligant, elegant party this is!

(My attempt to combine the Cassini news with the 35th anniversary of the death of Princess Grace of Monaco)

*Moving swiftly away from the obvious 'It's a good job 'huge ones' didn't probe Uranus' comment*

<BB<

Cassini "sun dive" into Saturn, size of a to nothing, in less that 5mins and it didn't turn into a pot of petunias or a whale

there's a point I've just thought of

"we" can't let Cassini wonder about, just in case it crashes on Europa or one of the other moons THAT might support life. So we'll dump it on the planet instead what was wrong with just aiming it into space like the "Voyagers" so can find it in time