We won't know about Cassini's death at Saturn until 83 minutes after it happens

One minute after the Cassini spacecraft plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, it will die, but we won't know it until 83 minutes later.

NASA will declare Cassini dead at 7:55 a.m. ET Friday morning, however, the intrepid spacecraft would have actually tumbled through Saturn’s churning clouds and incinerated like a meteor more than an hour and a half before that.

The final signal NASA scientists receive from Cassini will be a ghostly cry from a long-gone spacecraft.

This is because, at closest, Saturn is some 750 million miles from Earth. NASA expects the final signal, shot out from Cassini’s antenna as it falls into Saturn’s depths, to reach Earth 83 minutes after that final event.

Via Giphy

"The spacecraft's final signal will be like an echo. It will radiate across the solar system for nearly an hour and a half after Cassini itself has gone," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. "Even though we'll know that, at Saturn, Cassini has already met its fate, its mission isn't truly over for us on Earth as long as we're still receiving its signal."

The final signals will contain unprecedented information about Saturn’s atmosphere. Cassini will use an instrument that observes how light bounces off and gets absorbed by matter, called a spectrometer, to take "samples" of Saturn’s clouds.

Cassini’s dramatic death has been planned since the spacecraft’s inception, to protect the very cosmic objects it was designed to study.

Via Giphy

The spacecraft has spent 13 years giving humans unprecedented insight into Saturn and its massive system of moons. It has spied massive lakes of methane on the moon Titan, and plumes of water vapor and ice shooting into space from possible vents on Enceladus.

Scientists suspect that these moons might contain hints of life — perhaps bits of protein chains or evidence of primitive microbes themselves. If Cassini were left in Saturn’s orbit, it could one day make contact with and contaminate these pristine, otherworldly environments with Earthly matter.

Cassini’s orbit through Saturn has — without argument — been one of humanity's most valuable and captivating ventures into space, yet it will come to a swift end.

The spacecraft will plunge into Saturn's atmosphere at 70,000 miles per hour in its final minute of life. Thirty seconds later, it’s antenna and cameras will begin to burn apart.

And more than an hour after that, Earth will receive the dead spacecraft's final signal.