Saturn's seasonal atmosphere

Twenty years ago, the flames of a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket split the pre-dawn sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida. On 15 October 1997, the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft embarked on a 2.2 billion-mile journey to the ringed giant, Saturn. It has been in orbit since July 2004, offering glimpses of strange environments almost a billion miles from home. This joint mission from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) launched the careers of hundreds of scientists (myself included) and enthralled millions across the globe. On 15 September 2017, this grand old spacecraft will finally crash into Saturn and, ultimately, become a part of the planet itself.