https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531430-700-cassinis-grand-finale-where-next-in-the-search-for-alien-life/

But two lower-profile and seemingly unconnected things also happened that year – a deep-sea dive off the Galapagos Islands and a pair of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Their consequences are converging now in the depths of the outer solar system.

Those events marked the beginning of a revolution in our understanding: a story in which the Cassini probe, now reaching the end of its life, has played a distinguished part. Just 40 years ago, we never would have suspected that the secrets of how life formed on Earth, and whether it exists elsewhere, may lie in the icy moons of the outer solar system. That revelation, for which we have Cassini and its forebears to thank, is set to shape the next decades of space exploration – and perhaps lead to one of the biggest upheavals in human knowledge we can possibly imagine.