Thirty people had been chosen via application to be present for the end of the almost 20-year odyssey of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, which ended just before 10pm (AEST) on Friday with the spacecraft plunging into the atmosphere of the giant planet. There it will be vapourised into its constituent atoms, a decision made by Nasa to avoid the threat of the probe and its radioactive power source crashing and potentially contaminating one of Saturn’s moons – and the life that looks increasingly possible thereon.