DEEP SPACE PROBES
Five of NASA’s long-range spacecraft are heading beyond the Solar System. What will they find?
WORDS ANDREW MAY
When NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn ended in 2017, the spacecraft was deliberately destroyed by crashing it into the planet. The next year, at the end of the Dawn probe’s exploration of the asteroid belt, it was placed in a graveyard orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. These are the two most common fates of interplanetary missions, but there’s a third possibility. If a probe has sufficient speed to carry it out of the Solar System and into the space between stars, it can keep travelling forever.