Cassini spacecraft has successfully executed its dive between Saturn and its rings

Signal received! Cassini probe shoots through Saturn's rings

By Lauren Said-Moorhouse

Titan surface

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully executed its daring dive through the 1,500-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its rings, the first time a man-made object has navigated through the icy halo that hugs the gas giant.

Controllers operating the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California confirmed data collected during its passage was being received from the probe just after 8:00 a.m. GMT (3:00 a.m. ET) on Thursday.

"In the grandest tradition of exploration, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has once again blazed a trail, showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare," said Jim Green, director of the NASA's Planetary Science Division in a statement.

Titan

Plunging through the ring plane on Monday morning, scientists had taken precautions to protect the spacecraft from unexpected collisions with tiny smoke particles by using its dish-shaped antenna as a shield.

This meant repositioning Cassini's antenna away from Earth, which caused controllers to temporarily lose signal with the unmanned probe.

"We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Ring Structures

"I am delighted to report that Cassini shot through the gap just as we planned and has come out the other side in excellent shape."The unprecedented gap-run was the first of 22 weekly dives Cassini will undertake between April and September, traveling at a top speed of more than 76,800 mph (120,000 kph).

As it zipped through the gap, the probe traveled to within 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops (where air pressure is similar to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level), and within about 200 miles (300 kilometers) of the innermost visible edge of the rings, NASA said.

Now that engineers have reacquired the probe's signal, they will evaluate data from this first dive and make tweaks to the orbit and trajectory to ensure the craft is protected ahead of future dives.

During these final revolutions around Saturn -- which take around seven days -- Cassini will return pioneering scientific data which scientists hope will help them decipher how giant planets evolve.

Polar region

It will also collect a wealth of information including detailed maps of Saturn's gravity and magnetic fields, which could answer questions surrounding the speed of Saturn's rotations.

The closing plunges of the mission could also reveal the makeup and origin of the rings, as well as providing intriguing glimpses of the gas giant from closer than ever before.

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn for the last 13 years and is now entering the final phase of its 20-year mission, which NASA has dubbed "the grand finale."

It is now locked into a terminal collision course with the atmosphere of the planet, where it is expected to burn up like a meteor on September 15 at 9:45 a.m. GMT (6:45 a.m. ET).

False Color rings

"The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path, so that even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, no matter what," Maize said previously in a statement.

Shortly before impact, Cassini will send a final burst of information which will be received on Earth just over an hour later.

Launched in 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission -- a collaborative effort between NASA, the European Space Agency and Italian Space agency -- has twice been extended, in 2008 and 2010, but the probe is fast running out of rocket fuel for it's control jets.

By intentionally directing the craft to burn up in Saturn's atmosphere, controllers are hoping to prevent the decommissioned spacecraft from colliding with one of Saturn's moons.

This way, Cassini will not contaminate future scientific endeavors investigating habitability or potential life on the moons.

Before Cassini's mission, little was known about the planet. Only three other probes have visited this region of our solar system -- Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2, which undertook flybys that provided captivating snapshots of the planet and yielded ground-breaking discoveries.

But it was Cassini's first close-up survey of the planet and its system of rings and moons in 2004 that changed scientists' understanding of the planet and forever changed our approach to planetary exploration.

Cassini's next ring-run is scheduled for May 2.