https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147670-watching-cassinis-last-moments-from-inside-nasa-mission-control/

The beginning of the end started on 12 September with Titan’s “kiss goodbye.” Cassini made its last flyby of Saturn’s largest moon, using Titan’s gravity to steepen the spacecraft’s trajectory directly into Saturn’s maw.

Hours later, Cassini reached apoapse, the furthest point in its orbit before starting the 1.3 million-kilometer-long plunge into the gas giant. “It’s a roller coaster a million miles high. [Cassini]’s just falling, falling, falling with nothing in the way,” David Doody, Cassini real time operations engineer, explained to me when I arrived at JPL early the next morning.