Cassini's grand finale

[cosmolinguist]

#Remembering Cassini today, the day of its #GrandFinale flight into Saturn, with this photo taken #OTD in 2006 of Earth beyond the rings. pic.twitter.com/9inBloKPvf

— NASA History Office (@NASAhistory) September 15, 2017

I wrote about Cassini when it got to Saturn, musing on what a long time it had been traveling. So much had happened to me; I'd gone from a high school freshman to living in a country I hadn't thought much about before.

And then I happened to notice Cassini's seventh anniversary at Saturn, and thought how quickly and how slowly the years were going by.

Time piles up so quickly in space, where seven years is nothing compared to the uncountable vastness of the universe. But one of the great things about spaceships is that they connect the universe to the humans: its twenty years now Cassini has been in space. And I don't even know how many years in development to get it that far. A good chunk of a person's working life could have been spent on this one little thing, anyway, that flew through space and burnt up today.

"This is @CassiniSaturn." Yep. We say "Cassini did X", we mean 1000s of people working their hearts out. #GrandFinale pic.twitter.com/Ir7lVtIFUa

— Emily J (@EmExAstris) September 15, 2017

I've seen dramatic words about Cassini "plunging to its death" and some twee cartoons about how it's going home because Saturn is its home, but all I'm interested in is how much we love this little spaceship. We've made it a person, we've given it a lot of time and attention. We've followed it on twitter. My phone's background pictures aren't of my partners or even my dog; they're ones taken by Cassini. (This one and this one, in case you're interested.) Of course we'll miss it now it's gone.

Every time we see Saturn in the night sky, we'll remember. We'll smile. And we'll want to go back. #GrandFinale #GoodbyeCassini #Cassini pic.twitter.com/6tzJ4N9Jif

— CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) September 15, 2017

Here's a video with lots of pictures and nice music.

To truly reveal the wonders of Saturn, we had to go there. Look back at @CassiniSaturn's 13 amazing years exploring the planet pic.twitter.com/oApb3UJSSF

— NASA (@NASA) September 15, 2017

Comments

[ivy]

I saw a fellow on the street today wearing a Cassini shirt, and I accosted him and we had a pleasant conversation about how great it was. [grin] Nerds unite!