Cassini's magnetometer at Saturn

(Opening paragraph) Exactly one month shy of 20 years after its 15 October 1997 launch from Cape Canaveral, the Cassini–Huygens (hereafter referred to as Cassini) NASA–ESA spacecraft will end its life by burning up in the atmosphere of Saturn. This conclusion has been designed to protect any of the potentially habitable moons of Saturn (in particular Enceladus and Titan) from possible contamination by the spacecraft. It ends a mission that has been a resounding and demonstrable success: many scientific discoveries, thousands of published research papers, hundreds of graduated PhD students, and widespread excitement and inspiration among the general public and schoolchildren alike. The Cassini mission has been a truly international endeavour in which thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world, and from many different cultures, worked together towards a common goal.