In Eight Days the space craft Cassini-Huygens: Exploring Saturn's System will

[Jarqui]

4. In June 2004, Cassini arrived at Saturn's system

That same month, my father was given his death sentence from a return of a nastier lymphoma.
He just loved space, NASA, exploration, theories of how the universe evolved, etc.

In the last few weeks of his life in Aug 2004, the family converged at a resort in cottage country. They had internet access (not a given at the time) and he was able to see the Cassini pics along with the Mars rover pics.

13 years later, the Cassini mission has been one of their greatest missions.

I'll always be indebted to NASA, etc for giving my father those final thrills (and many before them) - letting him kind of visit those planets before his final voyage off this planet in Sept 2004.

It's a little emotional to see it end - crazy - emotional over a machine (of course, there are great people behind it ..)