Cassini mission fanfiction

NASA's decission

Cassini was doomed. NASA had made a hard decission, but it was more important to save Saturn's moons than continuing the mission for some little months. The mission had had great results, especially the discovery of Encedalus as a potencially habitable moon. An icy satellite with an unexpected underground. An ocean with the elements that form life.

Twenty years ago Cassini left the Earth to study Saturn and its moons propulsed by nuclear energy. After all this time, it was running out of fuel and, whenever this would happen, nobody knew where it might head to. To prevent it from crashing against one of the moons, NASA thought of using Titan's gravity to redirect it without consuming any fuel and send it to its last adventure. A group of orbits around the planet that would end with the spacecraft burning in its atmosphere. The remaining fuel was going to be used to point Cassini's communications array to the Earth so it could send the maximum information available until the very last moment.

Cassini had already done many orbits around the planet, but it was still alive and working. Just some more orbits were left. It was getting closer and closer to the planet when a strange signal was received by NASA. Cassini had become blind and deaf to anything around it, something that wasn't supposed to happen. Everything had become dark and nobody could come up with a reason. NASA knew at some point they would stop getting signal, which would mean the mission was over, but that, nothing could tell.

Suddenly, light came back. They thought maybe it had been a failure in the communications system, but then realised the information received was completely different from the one before. After studying the elements it perceived and the samples analysed, they concluded Cassini was inside Saturn's atmosphere. But that wasn't possible. It wasn't prepared for those conditions, however, there it was.

The engineers where astonished, the environment had changed in a sudden and the spacecraft was somewhere it wasn't supposed to be able to be. Everything was so confusing.

Finally, some hours later, they got a hint. Someone was physically manipulating the spacecraft. Someone, from Saturn, was physically manipulating the spacecraft. Who, how? That didn't make any sense. How could someone even be there?