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The amazing
Cassini spacecraft

and its sibling lander
Huygens have now concluded

their scientific studies,
bringing back years of data

to be combed through by scientists,

plotting their next journey
to Saturn and space.

Now it's time for other planets

and other spacecraft to shine.

Juno, piercing the cloak of Jupiter,

and her distant relative,
New Horizons at the edge

of the Solar System.

After 20 years, the Cassini
project finally comes to an end

in dramatic style.

But with one door closing, another opens.

Now, the enviable task of
having to unravel the data

Saturn has just laid bare begins.

And, we have literally
just scratched the surface.

- I think Cassini has left
us with humankind's presence

at another planet for 13 years,

seeing things that we have
never imagined seeing.

And at the same time, sharing
that with the entire world

and opening up vistas for
the next sets of missions.

One of these
is facing scientists

when looking at exploring the new frontier

is leaving it in a better
state than they found it.

So, eliminating the
problems of space junk,

or the introduction of
alien microbes is paramount

in their decision making.

- And it also helps us satisfy,

a planetary protection requirement.

We're protecting the tiny moon, Enceladus

as well as Titan.

Both of those have global oceans
underneath their icy crusts

and just in case there might
be life in those oceans,

we don't want Cassini to
crash into one of those moons

once we're out of fuel.

While the main
focus of the Cassini mission

was to delve into the mysteries
of Saturn and its rings,

the moons of Saturn proved
most science-worthy.

And Saturn has many moons, in
fact 62 with confirmed orbits.

Several are only 50
kilometers in diameter,

the largest being Titan
which is bigger than Mercury.

The Huygens module that
traveled aboard Cassini

also became the first
probe to land on a moon

other than our own and
transmit data back to Earth.

- The temperature at the surface of Titan

is about - 180 degrees, so it's very cold.

The landscapes of Titan
look a lot like those

we have on Earth.

We have rivers, lakes, seas,
almost oceans of methane.

It rains, it rains methane or
a mix of ethane and methane,

so there are lots of
meteorological phenomena

with geophysical phenomena
on Titan that makes you think

of what happens on Earth.

But the ingredients are quite different.

But it is
Saturn's sixth largest moon

that excited many scientists,
as it is virtually covered

by clean ice, and ejected
plumes of water into space.

- My favorite moon is Enceladus.

And the reason I'm partial
to Enceladus is it's

the moon that my team discovered
a water vapor plume at.

But not only is there liquid
water underneath the surface,

but there's organic material,
there's a heat source.

When people get excited
about the potential for life

elsewhere in the Solar System,

there are four things that you need.

You need a heat source,
you need liquid water,

you need organic material, and
you need those three things

to be stable over some period of time

so that life could potentially form.

At Enceladus, we've got
three, we're not sure

about the stability over time yet.

And so based on the Cassini
observations we made

back in May 2005, we've had lots and lots

more flybys of Enceladus.

Now we understand it much better.

We understand what
organic material is there.

One of the instruments, the
neutral mass spectrometer

in a very close flyby through
the plume found some ammonia

in the plume.

- First of all, we see moons.

Then, we start finding out
from the gravity measurements

and the imaging that there's an ocean,

and that it's global.

And then there was some measurements

by the cosmic dust analyzer that suggested

there was hot water being
circulated through the rock,

the silicon dioxide nanoparticles.

This is just the final step that shows

that there's molecular
hydrogen being produced

by these same hydrothermal processes,

and that molecular hydrogen
has the chemical energy

to support microbial systems
in the interior ocean.

- It's really the longevity
of the Cassini mission

that has allowed us to
put together the pieces

of the puzzle to really
understand a moon like Enceladus.

And even this late in
the mission, we continue

to look at our data to better
understand this ocean world.

Collating data is one thing,

but interpreting and providing a vision

for future missions is another.

This is an area for
which the Cassini project

came up trounced, because
it not only brought together

free agencies, it provided the
ground for future scientists

to develop skills that
will provide the basis

for new projects.

- The number of Ph.Ds we've
put through the system,

they are going to be the
educators of the next generations.

We've put out 3,000-plus
peer reviewed papers.

Hundreds of Ph.Ds, thousands
of peer-reviewed papers,

the scientific legacy is huge.

The engineering legacy
of using every ounce

of engineering capability
to exploit a system,

I think is, again, will be built upon.

And I can't ignore the
international cooperation.

This, we had 19 nations
contributing hardware

to this mission.

We've got over 26 nations now
contributing scientifically.

And despite whatever else is going on,

this really has been an
amazing collaboration

across the world.

The mighty
Jupiter is the current target

under the microscope with the
Juno mission in full swing.

The story of our Solar
System is linked to Jupiter

as it is believed that it
was the first planet formed.

So if we can understand
how, we can begin to unravel

the origins of our Solar System,

and thus, how the Earth came about.

Juno must work in a very harsh environment

to tease out the answers
from the gas giant.

- When you go to a place
as hazardous as Jupiter,

we put a lot of time through
the whole development process

in trying to design a
spacecraft% that will operate

in the high radiation
fields, magnetic environment,

spacecraft charging environment,

everything that you
deal with with Jupiter.

And I have to say, the spacecraft

has been performing admirably.

Jupiter's
radiation belts pose

one of the biggest problems
faced by Juno's scientists.

They exist within the
enormous magnetic field

that surrounds Jupiter.

With its magnetosphere trapping
of accelerating particles,

it produces intense belts of radiation

similar to Earth's Van Allen Belts,

but thousands of times stronger.

- Juno just flew by
Jupiter for the first time

with all the science instruments
on and it was spectacular.

The spacecraft performed flawlessly.

The instruments all
worked exactly as planned,

and the data is amazing.

We're looking deep into Jupiter,

we're learning about the
secrets that it's holding,

but we're also getting a lot
of surprises about the aurora,

about the atmosphere, how it works.

I mean, it's just incredible.

The flybys
which followed showed

that the massive amounts
of energy swirling

over Jupiter's polar regions were creating

the giant planet's powerful auroras,

but not in ways the researchers expected.

What puzzled the researchers
was the fact that despite

the magnitude of these
potentials at Jupiter,

they are observed only sometimes,

and are not the source of
the most intense auroras

as they are on Earth.

- Juno had its camera, Juno came on.

During the flyby we got the first pictures

of Jupiter's poles, the
north and south pole.

They were amazing, a lot of surprises.

It didn't look like we
thought, doesn't look much

like Saturn's pole.

Jupiter's poles are
covered in these cyclones,

like anticyclone storms,
some of them half the size

of the Earth or bigger.

And we're puzzled as to
how they could be formed

and stable in that configuration.

And the north pole doesn't
look like the south pole.

And so we're questioning,
the scientists are really

questioning whether this
is a dynamic system,

and are we seeing just one stage,

and over the next year we're
gonna watch it disappear?

Or is this a stable configuration,

and that these storms are
circulating around each other?

While the polar
activity appears unique

to our Solar System, the
engineers are looking

below its shell for answers.

- The new science results
from Juno really are our

first look, close-up,
at how Jupiter works.

And so for the first time,
we're looking inside of Jupiter

into the interior, and what we're seeing

is that it doesn't work at
all like we had predicted.

Almost every model that
has the interior motion,

how the magnetic field, the gravity field,

how the deep atmosphere
works, it's all different.

Like most
scientific undertakings,

they result in more questions
being asked than answered.

- So Juno's original
objectives really were

to understand how Jupiter formed.

And that would help us
understand how planets

in general form, and how the
whole Solar System was made.

What we're finding is that
actually we didn't understand

giant planet dynamics very well,

the whole atmosphere or
the interior structure.

- What we've seen so far is
exciting, no question about that

but it's like a puzzle.

And we're putting the pieces
of the puzzle together,

and it's exciting but we don't
have the whole picture yet.

And one of those puzzles

is the so-called Great Red Spot.

And while its presence in
a turbulent gaseous planet

is not unusual, the scale is.

The red spot covers an area
twice as large as Earth.

And we're gonna go
right over the Great Red Spot,

and that's really gonna be the first time

that we get a close look at
that and to see what it's like

underneath the top surface layer.

I mean, how deep are the roots of that.

That's a 300 year old storm.

A lot of scientists believe that the roots

must be very deep.

When we go over with our
microwave radiometer,

we're gonna see, is it the
same as the zones and belts,

or is it very different,
and nobody really knows.

But it's
not just Jupiter's poles

that hold the greatest interest
for the Juno investigators.

They are also intrigued
by the weather pattern

that is unique to this planet
yet familiar in other ways.

Studying the atmospheric
dynamics helps understand

other planets' atmospheres.

- So when we look at Jupiter,
we see a lot of structure

that looks very similar to the Earth.

We can see storms, we see
cyclones, we see anticyclones.

And these sort of storms
and weather systems

that we see on Earth are very similar

and are happening on Jupiter.

Fluid mechanics is hopefully
the same everywhere

in the universe.

But Jupiter and Earth are very different.

Jupiter's much bigger
and rotates a lot faster.

They're made of different material

and Jupiter's much
further away from the Sun

than the Earth is.

The quasi biennial oscillation
or the QBO on Earth

is an equatorial phenomenon
in the stratosphere

where the winds are changing direction

approximately every two years.

Depending on which phase the
QBO is in, eastward or westward

the temperature signal
corresponds to that,

so it's warmer in the eastwards phase,

and cooler in the westward phase.

It's been shown that it
could actually be a barrier

to transport of aerosols
across the equator.

And has been linked to the
frequency in the formation

of hurricanes in the Atlantic
and the Pacific Ocean.

The long term scales on
Earth's climate is something

that we're very interested
in and how that applies

to other planets'
atmospheres is really why

we're studying Earth and Jupiter.

The quasi quadrennial oscillation
in Jupiter's stratosphere

is the temperature signal
that we see in the equator.

We see the temperature
get warmer and cooler

approximately every four Earth years.

We used a general circulation
model where we focused

on simulating the effects
of small-scale waves

produced from convection in
Jupiter's equatorial region

to simulate the QQL.

The waves propagate
outwards from the clouds

and force the winds in the
stratosphere to change direction

going from eastward to
westward approximately

every four years.

Our model is able to reproduce
the behavior of the QQL,

but was also able to
reproduce temperatures

from the observations.

And both of those together
give us a lot of confidence

that our model is very accurate
in what's driving the QQL.

The outer planet serve as a laboratory

for understanding atmospheric physics

under very different conditions

that are present on the Earth.

Understanding how their
atmospheres change and evolve

and their climates, can give us insight

into any planetary atmosphere.

Juno has studied the planet

with a suite of tools, revealing much

that was previously
hidden to the human eye.

- We have an infrared
instrument on Juno called JIRAM,

and it was designed,
and built, and delivered

by the Italian Space Agency.

And this instrument makes
thermal maps of Jupiter,

so the images are showing
you what's warm, hot, cold

on Jupiter, and one of the
things you can see right away

is the center of some of
these hurricane-like storms

are cooler than the surrounding area.

And sometimes you go over a warm spot.

And we went over one that was very small

but seems hotter than
those surrounding area,

and that's very similar to what
the Galileo probe went into

back in 1995.

- The Juno mission is unique,
because it's the first time

that we've ever gone in a polar orbit,

which goes from pole to
pole over the north pole

through periapsis, and
under the south pole.

All the other missions we've done,

and all the observations
we've made from Earth

were made from the equator.

And you don't see the poles very well

if you're sitting on the equator.

This is the first time we get
the first, clear unobstructed

view of what the aurora looks like

and what the polar phenomena looks like.

And at the same time, we're flying through

the magnetosphere right above the aurora

so we can sample, in situ,
the charged particles

that are precipitating
down magnetic field lines,

the guys that are exciting
the emissions that we see.

Juno, like
its sister Cassini,

has a used by date when the craft runs out

of maneuvering fuel.

This may occur during its 12th orbit

at the end of its prime and mission.

However, now some mean
to extend the mission

if there are sufficient reserves.

In that case, the
de-orbit would occur later

on the 34th orbit as part

of the planetary
protection policy of NASA.

Its fact-finding mission
is leading the way

for the one to come, the Europa Clipper,

a mission in the design phase
to look closely at Europa,

the moon with a hidden ocean,

and the possible location for
life to evolve beyond Earth.

The blue haze of Pluto's
atmosphere, possibly

a hydrocarbon smog, seen
from 200,000 kilometers away

by NASA's departing New
Horizons spacecraft.

A few years ago, the dwarf planet Pluto

and its five known moons
were just small dots

in the outer reaches of our Solar System.

- One of the important
things you should understand

about Pluto is the real
scale of it compared

to the rest of the Solar System.

So we come here to the
beach to really convey

that scale and distance.

So, if I draw the Sun as
a 30 centimeter circle,

then we'd have to walk
about 35 steps this way

in order to draw the Earth
in the same type of scale.

So we're walking the equivalent
of 150 million kilometers,

which we call one astronomical unit.

Normally, Pluto orbits at
about 40 astronomical units

from the Sun, but it's actually
quite an elliptical orbit

so it changes between about
30 and 50 astronomical units.

But, back to the Earth.

So the Sun is over
there at 30 centimeters,

which means that the Earth
should be about here,

about three millimeters,
something like this.

If we were to draw
Pluto on the same scale,

it should be 0.3 millimeters,

and it should be one
kilometer down the beach,

so I'm going to draw it.

Now obviously, I can't draw
something that's 0.3 millimeters

so I have to draw Pluto a bit bigger.

If this is Pluto, then its
largest moon is Charon,

which is about half its size.

But Pluto has four other moons, Styx, Nyx,

Kerberos and Hydra.

So there's a lot going on
around the Pluto system.

It's not just a cold, dead, icy rock.

The spacecraft
spent 16 months sending its data

back to Earth.

And scientists and non-scientists
alike have been enthralled

by what it has revealed.

- If you go in closer to the surface,

you can see this type of
really diverse terrain.

So you have a very bright
region, these are flat plains,

not entirely sure how they formed yet,

but there's a couple of leading theories.

There's a huge range of mountains.

There's all kinds of
different aged surfaces,

some of them have lots of craters,

some of them have very few
which means they're younger.

If you look at a lot of detail at some

of the mountainous
regions, you can see that

they are a few kilometers
high but made of water-ice,

I mean, on Pluto it's
so cold that water-ice

is the hardest thing, it's more like rock.

And so, the stuff that
forms the softer material

is actually nitrogen ice.

Water-ice on
Earth is close to zero degrees,

but on Pluto, it's minus
230 degrees Celsius.

And as a glacier of nitrogen-ice,
called Sputnik Planitia,

thought to be under a million years old.

This is young by planetary standards.

And no one knows yet how
it formed or is renewed.

- One of the really fascinating things

is some of the surface
coloration you can see

in these images actually shows

that there are these
compounds called tholins

which are a combination of elements,

but they're related to
pre-biotic molecules.

So they're kind of relevant
to pre-biotic chemistry.

And I think the fact
that they have been able

to form on planetary surfaces very far out

in the Solar System at
very cold temperatures

really has implications
for a lot of places.

I mean, if you can imagine for
star systems outside our own

where the star may be dim and
the planets are quite faraway,

it's interesting to know
that there are molecules

that could be involved in
supplying biotic material

to processes that may one day lead to life

or be involved in life
or something like that.

They're actually forming
way out in the Solar System

where no one really expected.

Pluto is
unlike anything seen before.

But the six gigabytes
of New Horizons images

and scientific measurements
are giving scientists

mysteries to unravel for years to come.

In the meantime, asleep for the moment,

the probe travels deeper into the unknown

soon to awaken at its next destination.