Following on Cassini's discoveries, NASA aims to probe Jupiter's Europa for potential life. With every new world we discover, we should look back at our own planet with awe, says Marcelo Gleiser.
The NASA probe that has spent the past 13 years making countless discoveries about the ringed planet and its moons was taken out of orbit and sent plunging into Saturn's atmosphere.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft will crash into Saturn on Friday, but we'll always have the shots it took of icy volcanoes, hexagonal storms, ethane lakes and ripples in Saturn's rings.
NASA's probe has spent the past 13 years orbiting Saturn, making a number of important discoveries along the way. On Friday, it will hurl itself into the planet's atmosphere and disintegrate.
"This is the closest we've come, so far, to identifying a place with some of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment," NASA says. There are signs of a promising reaction under the surface.