Goodbye Cassini!

How long does it continue to report as it dives into Saturn? Will we get any pictures or data from inside the first few gas layers before it gets dissolved or crushed or whatever is going to happen to it?

Are they going to have the LWT reading after the wake?

we wont know whether the entire Hydrogen liquid based surface BLEW UP and initiated a new SUN. Were far enough away that itll just be another smaller sun on the horizon every thirty years or so.

This was the first probe to use digital SS components for data collection.I was listening to a scientist reporting about how our cell phones have more computing and data storage capacity than the Cassini program.
Its really like 40 yeqr old technology

One of Cassini's final discoveries is a Saturn moon that has all the elements necessary to support life.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/enceladus/

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/grand-finale/overview/

What is a "LWT reading"?

It was great. What else is going on out there?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/60532/15-ongoing-space-missions-you-should-know-about

According to this there are 15 missions ongoing.
edit - sorry. the link is old.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/

Apparently these are all of the missions. Have to go through one at a time to find out if they are active. Look at Explorer1. They are actually holding the entire rocket.

Wondering if it is - "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver"?

When you go to JPL, or rather use a search engine, you can type a criterion such as "JPL+Mars rovers," and get a much more accurate response. If you have even more info, you can refine it more narrowly. "JPL+Curiosity" will take you to the mission section for that rover. "JPL+Dawn" will take you to the mission page for the mission which visited Vesta and is now at Ceres.

I have to be careful. If I go to JPL, I can spend hours there without noting the passage of time.

Off hand (I'll probably overlook some):

The Juno orbiter is circling Jupiter. They are still welcoming the public to discuss/vote on what parts of Jupiter they should photograph on each pass:
http://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/voting

We have that big Mars rover. Also, one of the two older medium-sized rovers is still going.

The Dawn orbiter is still orbiting Ceres in the asteroid belt.

The probe that shot past Pluto will pass close by a large Kuiper Belt Object in 2019.

The old Voyager probes are well past any major discoveries, but they are giving us our first readings of interstellar space.



I believe this is the most recent planning for future missions:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/131171.pdf

They break their missions up into small, medium and large. The top three large missions in their future plans are:

a) something that will land on Mars, package up soil samples, and launch them back to earth for study

b) an orbiter around Jupiter's moon Europa (believed to have a liquid water ocean under the ice that could hypothetically harbor non-earth life)

c) a Cassini-like orbiter/probe for Uranus

Snicker.

Sorry; I'm 11 years old sometimes.

Okay, often.

This is as good a place as any for this:

I just watched the first one before coming here. I had no idea they got all that footage.

That was impressive, I though.