Cassini's epic 20-year journey comes to an end

Nasa's Cassini space probe has crashed into Saturn's atmosphere and ended its epic 20-year journey to explore the planet.

Cassini began its mission to Saturn back in 1997, reaching the ringed planet in 2004.

Its aim was to take pictures, giving the closest, most detailed look at Saturn's rings and its moons.

Amongst its many discoveries, Cassini has found new moons orbiting the planet, signs of possible life on existing moons and huge underground oceans spewing fountains of water into space.

Cassini set off for space 20 years ago

In April, scientists announced the final plan for Cassini as the craft started to run out of fuel.

As its journey came to an end, scientists didn't want to risk the craft crashing into Saturn's moons, which could damage the environment where there could be conditions for alien life.

Instead, they directed the spacecraft into Titan's orbit one last time, using it as a catapult to drive Cassini into a 12-mile gap in the rings, whilst travelling at 70,000 mph.

A detailed view of Saturn's rings made with images from Cassini

All the while Cassini was recording huge amounts of information.

Nasa hopes to use it to learn more about the age of the rings and take a closer look at giant hurricanes at the north and south poles of the planet.

People who had been working on the mission hugged each other as it was announced Cassini's epic journey had finally come to an end

Scientists hugged as it was officially confirmed that the mission was over. Goodbye, Cassini!