Cassini LIVE stream: Watch NASA grand finale live stream of Cassini death dive to Saturn

The end is nearly here, and in the morning hours of Friday, Nasa’s Cassini Mission will enter its final fly-by of the ringed planet.

You can watch the entire event thanks to the live stream below, as part of Nasa’s educational programming on YouTube.

There is one caveat however. Because the space probe is an incredible 800 million miles away, it would take more then 80 minutes for the live feed to travel back to Earth.

Nasa has circumvented this problem by creating a simulated animation that will track Cassini on its plunge tomorrow.

Cassini will continue to communicate with Earth until it loses connection with home, giving scientists one last chance to explore Saturn before its fiery demise.

The probe is expected to send back its last communiques and pictures of the planet just before 9am BST (4am EDT), before the radio waves go silent. All contact will then be lost around 12.55pm BST (7.55am EDT).

Because the whole operation is costing the space agency over £2.4 billion ($3.6 billion), Nasa is determined to utilise it to its full potential.

“It’s like getting a whole new mission,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini’s project scientist. 

“The scientific value of the F ring and Grand Finale orbits is so compelling that you could imagine a whole mission to Saturn designed around what we’re about to do.”

Cassini was shot into space in 1997 with the ambitions to send it on a long-winded but unprecedented mission to study Saturn.

The nuclear-powered space probe however did not reach the gas giant until 2004, and it has now run out of fuel.

Nasa has since conducted several fly-by’s of the planet, with a particular interest in its rings and the icy moon Titan.

“We’ve used Titan’s gravity throughout the mission to sling Cassini around the Saturn system,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

“Now Titan is coming through for us once again, providing a way for Cassini to get into these completely unexplored regions so close to the planet.

Nasa are expecting this  once-in-a-lifetime mission to be a “thrilling ride”.

“The last time we got this close to the rings was during arrival at Saturn in 2004, and we saw only their backlit side,” said Ms Spilker.

“Now we have dozens of opportunities to examine their structure at extremely high resolution on both sides.”

Alternatively you can track Cassini’s stats and signals thanks to Nasa’s interactive online tool, which you can find here.