These Stunning Photos of Saturn Are a Beautiful Goodbye From NASA’s Cassini Probe

The Cassini spacecraft will take a plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on Friday after spending 20 years flying through the solar system and commit one final act: self-destruction.

The NASA spacecraft left Cape Canaveral in Florida in 1997 and has traveled about 4.9 billion miles (7.8 billion km) since then, according to NASA. Since Cassini arrived at Saturn, it has circled the ringed planet nearly 300 times, taking photographs for scientists back on Earth to learn from.