September 15, 2017. On this date, the Cassini spacecraft plunged into the planet Saturn, becoming part of the planet it had been orbiting since 2004. The discoveries and new insights provided by the 13-year Cassini-Huygens mission at Saturn are far too numerous to recount here.

Is Cassini still orbiting Saturn?

Cassini Spacecraft Ends Its Historic Exploration of Saturn

NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its final approach to Saturn and dove into the planet's atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 15, 2017.

Why was Cassini destroyed?

The mission ended on September 15, 2017, when Cassini's trajectory took it into Saturn's upper atmosphere and it burned up in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, which might have offered habitable environments to stowaway terrestrial microbes on the spacecraft.