many of her friends are here and i'm so excited to welcome you all from jpl. many of you have started in the 1980's, others have started more recently. we won't say who. [laughter] >> i'm really excited that you are here and celebrating with us. dr. ed stone has been my friend for decades. the retired director -- on the 1972, aproject since major spokesperson for the voyager science team and one of the key contributors. six new yorkte times bestsellers, which is still inspiring to me. the greater director of the interstellar masters project -- the grantored multiplan admission using the gravity assist technique to reduce the mission duration from 40 years to less than 10 years. nasa used this with voyager and voyager two missions. dr. alan cummings, one of the funniest guys in any party will ever go to . a senior scientist who works with ed stone studying the nature of particles entering the solar system from the local interstellar medium and locally accelerated. i want to thank the national air and space museum for hosting us. it is a lovely place. i'm here m

. >> reporter: oh, it's been quite a day here at jpl. take a look.s is the modeled of cassini half the size of the real thing and as you said, 20 years of work, 13 years of orbiting saturn, bringing back valuable information. let's go inside to mission control. >> congratulations to you all. this has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team. i'm going to call this the end of mission. project manager off the net. [ voice shaking ] [ applause ] >> reporter: a truly successful end of a long-term mission. cassini plunged into saturn's upper atmosphere about 3:30 this morning at the speed of 70,000 miles an hour. the spacecraft worked until the very last minute sending back new information about saturn's composition. it finally disintegrated in the heat and the high pressure of the atmosphere. for years, cassini transmitted thousands of photos of saturn, its moons, scientists discovered 6 new moons and water. listen to how the program manager described the mission. >> there are times in this world when things

jpl, they are all of the voyagers and all of the mariner program and the galileos and magellans. experience that went in to the design of the cassini spacecraft. we had my atlo team -- not my atlo, warren moore's team, we had people with 20, 30 years on the floor building cassini. and they built a brick house. and as soon as it launched we knew we had a great spacecraft. even though we spent seven years going to venus, venus, ertarth, jupiter, we spent seven years just trying to get to saturn. we knew we had a great spacecraft and that's why we were able to stay 13 years at saturn. >> it has been an extraordinary mission. i know that you decided to end it the way you did because you didn't want to contaminate the two moons. so it rather burned up into the saturn atmosphere before plunging into the air. but what did we learn? what do we take from what we learned? >> well, there's a whole new ocean worlds programs based on europa at jupiter and based on saturn. we had no ideas these rocky moons could have ice water jets. we used titan as the gravity assist. we went by titan 127 tim

now to make sure that the mission was a success, the scientists here at jpl went back to a traditionhere they eat their lucky peanuts. >> that's why you're holding the peanuts. >> we're like, why is she holding the peanuts. >> yeah, they're very good with raisins. thank you very much. >> one of gayle's favorites. nuts and raisins. the salty and the sweet. >> that's right. very high calorie, but it's good. >> i'm getting hungry now. >>> two parents are on a unique journey of healing after the loss of children in the war on terror. ahead their cross-country bike ride to honor the memory of their sons and to inspire other gold star families. >>> up next, a symbol of resilience is flying again in a community slammed by hurricane irma. >>> first, >>> this portion of cbs this morning sponsored by walgreens. at the corner of hap happy & healthy. plus, when you get a flu shot at walgreens, you help provide a lifesaving vaccine to a child in need through the un foundation. it's that easy to get your flu shot and make a difference. so swing by your local walgreens today. walgreens. at the corn