NASA’s Cassini Begins Mission ‘Endgame’ With Its First Ring-Grazing Dive

The Cassini spacecraft has begun the first phase of its mission “endgame” by making its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn’s rings, NASA announced Monday.

The spacecraft, which has been in orbit around the gas giant since 2004, crossed through the plane of the rings at 8:09 a.m. EST on Sunday at a distance of approximately 57,000 miles above Saturn’s cloud tops — just 6,800 miles from the F ring, which is roughly 500 miles wide.