Cassinis final pictures of Saturn before suicidal dive into planet

NASA has published Cassini’s final images of Saturn before the spaceship performed its death dive into the planet’s atmosphere.

Cassini disintegrated into a ball of fire at 7:55 a.m. EDT.

Flight controllers at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory received one last burst of scientific data from Cassini before the radio waves went flat and the spacecraft fell silent.

NASA’s Earl Maize said he felt great pride and couldn’t have asked for more from “such an incredible machine.”

Cassini is the only spacecraft to ever orbit Saturn and send back stunning close-up images of the planet, its rings and moons in all their glory.

It also peered at the mysterious moons of Enceladus and Titan, which are thought to hide oceans that could contain alien lifeforms.

“We’ve left the world informed but still wondering,” Maize said earlier this week. “We’ve got to go back. We know it.”

Cassini took one last batch of pictures before its final job: sampling the atmosphere of the gas giant and sending the data back to Earth.

The spacecraft tumbled out of control while plummeting at 76,000 mph through the gas giant planet’s atmosphere.

This Grand Finale, as NASA calls it, was dreamed up when Cassini’s fuel tank started to get close to running empty after 13 years exploring the planet.

Scientists wanted to prevent Cassini from crashing into Enceladus or Titan and contaminating those pristine worlds.

And so in April, Cassini was directed into the previously unexplored gap between Saturn’s cloud tops and the rings.

Twenty-two times, Cassini entered the gap and came out again. The last time was last week.

Maize said all the staff was on hand “as our faithful traveler from Earth makes its final goodbye.”

The leader of Cassini’s imaging team, Carolyn Porco, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, was so involved with the mission for so long that now, “I consider it the start of life, part two.”

Cassini was launched in 1997 and took seven years to travel two billion miles to Saturn, before embarking on a 13-year journey of discovery that delivered a wealth of scientific data on the planet and its moons.

It was an international endeavor, with 27 nations taking part. The final price tag was $3.9 billion.

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