The US space agency NASA received a final signal from its Cassini spacecraft on Friday as it ended a groundbreaking, 13-year Saturn mission.

“This morning a lone explorer – a machine made by human-kind – finished its mission 900 million miles away,” Cassini project manager Earl Maize said at a news conference on Friday at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We believe we got every last second of data.”

Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, entered the gaseous giant’s crushing atmosphere at 7:55 a.m. EDT (1155 GMT) at about 113,000 km per hour, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

Reuters wrote that at the end of Cassini’s voyage, which began with its launch in 1997 and a seven-year journey to Saturn, was met with applause, hugs and tears from NASA officials after its final transmission was received, according to video footage on the space agency’s website.

Officials at the news conference displayed the last set of images Cassini captured of Saturn as it crashed into the planet. The planet’s lakes and seas near its north pole were visible, along with detailed views of gaps in its massive rings.

Maize said Cassini’s data, sent until the final fiery moment, was already being studied by NASA analysts in Arizona.

The transmissions are expected to include unprecedented data from the atmosphere’s upper fringe, about 1,915 km above Saturn’s cloudtops. The data took 84 minutes to reach NASA antennas in Canberra, Australia, Maize said.