Project managers with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are celebrating the 10-year-anniversary of the Cassini spacecraft's arrival at Saturn -- by plotting the robot probe's end.

Starting in 2016, Cassini -- which launched in 1997, reached Saturn in 2004 and is operated from the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California -- will embark on a series of extraordinary maneuvers and trajectories that will allow it to explore the gas giant, its rings and moons as never before.

The spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn's north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring. Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the active geysers on the planet's moon Enceladus, and then will hop the rings and dive between the planet and innermost ring 22 times.

Then sometime in 2017, after the balance of its on-board nuclear fuel is spent, and to avoid the potential of it colliding with and contaminating one of Saturn's moons, according to a report published by the Pasadena Star-News four years ago, the craft will destroy itself by plunging into the planet.

"We can't pollute the surface of Enceladus, but going to Saturn is okay," project scientist Bob Pappalardo said in the 2010 Star-News story.

After soliciting more than 2,000 suggestions from the public, the probe's mission team recently picked a name for the last phase of the long voyage: the Cassini Grand Finale.

A NASA news release explained that since Cassini's last series of moves to will take it so close to the planet itself, the teams had started referring to the phase as "the proximal orbits."

But the decision was made that a more exciting moniker was needed, so in early April the mission's team asked the public for help choosing a new name.

"We chose a name for this mission phase that would reflect the exciting journey ahead while acknowledging that it's a big finish for what has been a truly great show," said project manager Earl Maize.

Over the last decade, the tough little spacecraft has beamed back to Earth hundreds of gigabytes of scientific data included in more than 3,000 scientific reports, said a NASA news release.

Cassini's top accomplishments and discoveries include:

  • The Huygens probe makes first landing on a moon in the outer solar system (Titan);
  • Discovery of active, icy plumes on the Saturnian moon Enceladus;
  • Saturn's rings revealed as active and dynamic -- a laboratory for how planets form;
  • Titan revealed as an Earth-like world with rain, rivers, lakes and seas;
  • Studies of Saturn's great northern storm of 2010-2011;
  • Studies reveal radio-wave patterns are not tied to Saturn's interior rotation, as previously thought;
  • Vertical structures in the rings imaged for the first time;
  • Study of prebiotic chemistry on Titan;
  • Mystery of the dual, bright-dark surface of the moon Iapetus solved;
  • First complete view of the north polar hexagon and discovery of giant hurricanes at both of Saturn's poles.