As I understand it, in order to prevent contamination of Saturn's moons Cassini will be put into the atmosphere of the Gas Giant at the end of its lifetime. When this happens will there be instrumentation on board to ensure that we get information about the atmosphere of the planet as there was in the probe that was sent by Galileo into Jupiter?

Probably not a lot of data will be sent back. The probe Galileo dropped in, had a heat shield and parachute and was able to transmit data via the mother ship for quite a while after entering the atmosphere. Cassini's transmissions will stop as soon as it enters the atmosphere.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

....would that we could watch the monsters grow as the chemistry of Saturn mutates the microbes we will have so casually donated.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

I'm with luminal...any data we get will probably be of little use, especially if the entry takes place on the night side. It will be going so fast that it will spend too little time in the exosphere to send much data.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

Must it go? I've come to see Cassini as a bit of a friend.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

It will eventually use all the propellant required to keep it able to point its antenna toward Earth, or to aim it to take pictures. When that happens, it becomes mildly dangerous debris.

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Forming opinions as we speak

You're right, that was a dumb thing of me to say.
But still I'm :-(

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I'm not impressed with the reasoning here. There's an unbelievably long shot that two of Jupiter's moons might have biospheres contaminatable by what was on Galileo, but nothing in the Saturn system suggests that even a remote possibility of a biosphere in existance, to say nothing of potentially existing ever.

Which begs the question of mildly dangerous to whom? The volume of space here is sickeningly vast, when compared to a relatively busy street around Mars, and the unholy congestion in Earth orbit where an incidental satellite collision has never been recorded, what's at risk?

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

There is some speculation that Titan and Enceladus could have life (and a bit stronger speculation that Titan might have had life when it was younger and hotter).

I think a problem is unlikely in the extreme. On the other hand, if they can throw it at Saturn when it is of no further use, I don't see a downside.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Especially if the can make science in the process.

Only downside is that nobody can then recover it and put it in a museum.

Best that could happen is that someone finds a way to conduct a unplanned soft landing a la NEAR-Shoemaker on some of the small moons.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I'd like to see it manuvered into the ring plane and become a ring particle. Imagine what we would see as Cassini flies along at the same speed as the other ring particle's

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

I doubt that's possible, but if it was, what a sight!

I myself also favor a suicide plunge through the rings, but I doubt it'll happen.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State