The final mission for Cassini
As reported by investigative journalist and Beyond Nuclear board member, Karl Grossman, and published at Enformable (founded and run by Beyond Nuclear board member Lucas Hixson):
Despite protests around the world, the Cassini space probe—containing more deadly plutonium than had ever been used on a space device—was launched 20 years ago. And this past weekend—on Earth Day—the probe and its plutonium were sent crashing into Saturn.
The $3.27 billion mission constituted a huge risk. Cassini with its 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 fuel was launched on a Titan IV rocket on October 17, 1997 despite several Titan IV rockets having earlier blown up on launch.
At a demonstration two weeks before in front of the fence surrounding the pad at Cape Canaveral from which Cassini was to be launched, Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, warned of widespread regional damage if this Titan IV lofting Cassini exploded on launch. Winds could carry the plutonium “into Disney World, University City, into the citrus industry and destroy the economy of central Florida,” he declared.
Grossman literally wrote the book about Cassini and related nuclear power in space subject matter, The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. See his website.
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As reported by the Washington Post in an article entitled "This weird moon of Saturn has some essential ingredients for life," the Pu-238 laden Cassini space probe is still scheduled to crash into Saturn's atmosphere, incinerating its ultra-hazardous plutonium in relative proximity to the most promising location for life beyond Earth that we know of in the solar system.