U.S. space agency NASA received the final signal from its Cassini spacecraft, which ended a groundbreaking 13-year Saturn mission on Friday with a meteor-like plunge into the planet’s atmosphere, transmitting data until the final moment.
Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, ended its mission at 7:55 a.m. EDT, shortly after it lost contact with Earth as it entered the gas giant’s crushing atmosphere at about 70,000 miles an hour (113,000 km per hour), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.
