Event horizons

I was watching the SOI burn on NASA TV today. The JPL mission page has a lot of info as well. So after 7 years the Cassini probe has started slowing down on its way to orbiting the ringed giant.

And speaking of robotic probes, the Mars rovers are still going strong, well past their 90-day mission plan. It is a great day for science, indeed.

The weird part about all of this is that the probe has already done it's thing. All we're waiting for is for the signal from Cassini to travel from far orbit around Saturn to our receivers here on Earth. It makes one long for an ansible.