"These worlds that they found, we never knew were there, are changing how we think about life itself," he said. "And so for me, that's why it's truly a civilization-scale mission, one that will stand out among other missions, anywhere."
The discovery of new worlds has been the drive for many researchers all over the world. The Hubble telescope was part of this new desire to discover the unknown, opening our eyes to the possibilities of our universe.
Scientists are already eager to go back and delve into the wet, wild worlds of Enceladus and Titan. Proposals are under consideration by NASA, but there's nothing official yet. In the meantime, NASA plans sometime in the 2020s to send an orbiter and lander to Europa, a moon of Jupiter believed to have a global ocean that might be compatible for life.
The idea of going to Europa and Titan, both moons of Saturn, have been running through the minds of scientists for a long time now. Ever since the first pictures of the two moons came out, the belief that the water-covered spheres may contain life has had many scientists extremely excited to send probes down.
In all, Cassini collected more than 453,000 images and traveled 4.9 billion miles. It was an international endeavor, with 27 nations taking part. The final price tag was $3.9 billion.
The amount of data we have from Cassini is crazy to think about. Quite a few nations were involved in Her mission, and the price tag is relatively low in terms of exploration craft in the past and present.
Cassini actually burned up like a meteor 83 minutes earlier as it dove through Saturn's atmosphere, becoming one with the giant gas planet it set out in 1997 to explore. But it took that long for the news to reach Earth a billion miles away.
The Cassini has been orbiting Saturn before I was born and was just recently destroyed. If the NASA technology from the '90s lasts that long, imagine how long our tech would stay up if we launched them now. The amount of information we would be able to recover is astounding.
More than 1,500 people, many of them past and present team members, had gathered at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for what was described as both a vigil and celebration. Even more congregated at nearby California Institute of Technology, which runs the lab for NASA.
The celebrations after the launch of the Apollo missions were much bigger than this, but the same concept is present. The nation congratulated the team of scientists and the brave astronauts after returning home. The difference now is that we wouldn't see this headlining the news anytime soon.