Before they were crushed, burned, or frozen forever — these spacecraft sent back their final, haunting photos. 🚀📸 From the boiling skies of Venus to the icy edge of Neptune, each image is like a postcard from the brink of destruction. These brave machines traveled billions of miles just to show us what no human has ever seen… and what no probe will ever survive again. Ready to see the last moments before the silence? 🌌🔥❄️ Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:00Ah, Saturn. Incredible with its majestic rings and swirling clouds.
00:12But what would it be like to dive into it?
00:16NASA's Cassini tried that, and it turned out to be a wild trip.
00:21NASA's Cassini spacecraft was a probe that spent 13 years orbiting Saturn and gathering some incredible data.
00:27One of its major goals was to help us understand how come Saturn's atmosphere is so hot.
00:33The upper atmospheres of planets are always heated, duh. They're directly under the Sun.
00:38The strange thing about Saturn is that gas giants are too far from the Sun to get that kind of warmth.
00:44So Cassini didn't just observe the planet from outside.
00:48On September 15, 2017, it dove deep to the journey that would become the spacecraft's grand finale.
00:55Its last moments were spent inside Saturn's upper atmosphere, sending back priceless data as it slowly disintegrated.
01:04Now, these upper layers are no joke.
01:07The planet's horrifying magnetic field hums with energy, and powerful winds whip around at thousands of miles per hour.
01:14Cassini would pass through thick layers of clouds, hazy, pale gold and muted, reflecting the Sun's faint light.
01:21And these aren't cute, fluffy, Earth-like clouds made of water vapor.
01:25This is a nightmare cocktail of hydrogen and helium.
01:29The probe ventured deeper, passing through the region where Saturn's iconic rings rain material onto the planet.
01:36Cassini discovered that this rain was more intense than anyone expected – more than 22,000 pounds of material per second.
01:44That's at a rate that Saturn's rings might not last forever.
01:48The planet's own gravity could eat them away completely someday, unless the rings get a sudden update.
01:55These are all tiny grains of ice and dust, caught in the planet's gravity, falling into the atmosphere like a relentless storm.
02:02The grains, mixed with water, methane, and even chemicals like propane and butane, slowly alter Saturn's atmospheric chemistry.
02:11It mixes with the particles in the planet's upper atmosphere, making them heavier and warming Saturn up.
02:18Unfortunately, this was too much for poor little Cassini.
02:22It was designed to be tough enough for the outer layers, but it burned up before it could descend into the terrifying deeper regions.
02:29In the more intense layers of Saturn's atmosphere, winds reach extreme speeds of over 1,100 miles per hour.
02:38The pressure becomes crushing, and the deeper you go, the more overwhelming it becomes.
02:43It would feel like entering an ocean of gas, one with no clear surface, where the sky gets darker, thicker, and more hostile as you descend.
02:52And at a certain point, complete darkness.
02:55Just you and the overwhelming mass of hydrogen gas pressing in from all sides.
03:01But Cassini's sacrifice was invaluable to scientists.
03:04The key data it sent us before the grand finale allowed scientists to map Saturn's upper atmosphere more completely than ever before.
03:13Cassini tracked bright stars, like those in Orion and Canis Major, as they passed behind the planet, measuring how their starlight shifted.
03:21This helped scientists to understand how dense and hot the atmosphere was.
03:27It left us some final pictures as well, though they're not as impressive as you might think.
03:32It was a monochrome shot taken from about 394,000 miles away, showing a dark portion of Saturn's night side, softly illuminated by the reflection of its own rings.
03:44NASA also posted a picture made by their own artists of what Cassini could have seen in its last moments.
03:50And, of course, it gave us the answer to the big mystery of Saturn's heat.
03:55It's because of auroras.
03:57It turns out that, due to the crazy magnetic field, the planet's cloud layers are sparked up by sudden bursts of auroras at the poles.
04:06They're like the northern lights on Earth, but far more intense.
04:09The gas giant skies occasionally light up with radiant greens and blues.
04:13They're sparked by the interaction between solar winds and the charged particles from Saturn's moons.
04:19The hottest areas of Saturn were near these auroras.
04:23These light shows are powerful enough to heat the upper atmosphere, spreading warmth across the planet.
04:29Thanks to this added information, we discovered something important, not just about Saturn, but about all gas giants across our solar system and beyond.
04:40Meanwhile, the photos we have of Venus are much more dramatic.
04:44Venus is a bit closer to the Sun than Earth.
04:47It's often been called Earth's twin because of the similarities, like in size, mass, and composition.
04:53But don't be fooled.
04:55Beneath those thick clouds lies one of the most toxic environments in our solar system.
05:00Its surface is a nightmare, where temperatures soar to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead.
05:08The pressure on the planet is crushing as well, 92 times that of Earth's.
05:13That's like standing 3,000 feet under the ocean.
05:17We just couldn't resist taking some pictures.
05:19So, in the 1970s, scientists managed to land probes on this volcanic, unforgiving surface.
05:26And these missions were successful.
05:28They managed to send back the first photos of Venus and showed us incredible stuff.
05:33The first probe lasted only 23 minutes on the surface and then crushed down under this crazy pressure, winds, and heat.
05:41Both first and second probes captured black-and-white panoramas of a rocky hillside.
05:46On both, the second lens failed to eject.
05:49The horizon was flat, the ground strewn with jagged rocks, and the oppressive atmosphere pressed down like an invisible force.
05:56After lots of hurdles, we finally managed to look at colorful pictures from Venus in the 1980s.
06:03This spacecraft lasted more than two hours after extreme conditions.
06:07It's incredible that they managed to send us anything at all.
06:10Venus is a planet where metals melt, and where the atmosphere itself eats away the spacecraft.
06:16The photos it took showed that, on Venus, the skies aren't blue, but an eerie yellow due to the thick clouds of sulfuric acid.
06:24NASA also has some computer simulations of what Venus's surface could look like.
06:30But these don't really convey the horror of actually being there.
06:34Perhaps it's time we look at Venus once more.
06:37There's so much we don't know about this fiery neighbor.
06:42Finally, we also tried to enter Jupiter's atmosphere in the 90s.
06:46And that's the hardest one on the list.
06:49NASA's Galileo missions probe was designed to dive into Jupiter.
06:53It was launched in 1989 and traveled millions of miles with a small entry probe on board.
07:00This tiny hero would face one of the most intense environments we've ever encountered in space.
07:06It was finally released on July 13, 1995.
07:10At that moment, the spacecraft was still 50 million miles away from Jupiter.
07:15So just to enter the atmosphere, it had to fall for months.
07:19And it finally did fall on December 7th, plunging headfirst into Jupiter's thick, swirling atmosphere.
07:27The probe slammed into Jupiter's skies at a staggering 106,000 miles per hour.
07:33That's fast enough to cross the United States from Los Angeles to New York in 90 seconds.
07:39The intense deceleration caused the probe to experience a horrifying gravity.
07:45228 times stronger than the Earth's, it slowed down from supersonic speeds to just 100 miles per hour in minutes.
07:53The heat generated by its entry was so extreme that the shockwave ahead of it glowed as brightly as the Sun itself.
08:00The temperature soared to 28,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
08:04Then, all this time, somehow, the probe was collecting data every second and sending it all to us.
08:11It gave us some critical information about Jupiter's mysterious atmosphere.
08:17For example, it turned out that Jupiter's upper atmosphere was drier than expected.
08:23Less water vapor and fewer organic compounds than scientists thought.
08:26The probe also measured fierce winds of up to a half a mile per second.
08:32And, surprisingly, it didn't see that much lightning, even though we thought these are never-ending on Jupiter.
08:38One of the probe's biggest surprises was the discovery that Jupiter's atmosphere contained less helium than we thought.
08:46It also revealed a horrifying radiation belt about 30,000 miles above Jupiter's clouds.
08:52It's like intense radiation encircles the planet like a cosmic shield.
08:57The poor little guy managed to survive for 58 minutes.
09:01It eventually succumbed to immense pressure.
09:04Meanwhile, the Galileo orbiter continued its mission, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.
09:10That's it for today.
09:12So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:17Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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