After 10 years of returning valuable information on Saturn, NASA's Cassini probe is nearing its end and the space agency is planning the finale with help from the general public.

According to a press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the space agency settled on "the Cassini Grand Finale" as a name for the probe's final mission after receiving more than 2,000 name submissions. Cassini will begin orbiting closer and closer to Saturn starting in 2016 after climbing above the planet's north pole repeatedly.

Cassini team members were going to name the final mission "the proximal orbits," but opened a naming contest to try and generate something a little more exciting.

"We chose a name for this mission phase that would reflect the exciting journey ahead while acknowledging that it's a big finish for what has been a truly great show," Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's JPL in Pasadena, Calif., said in the release.

For its last hoorah, Cassini will fly just outside the narrow F ring before probing the Enceladus moon and its geysers one last time. Cassini will then dive in between Saturn and its innermost ring and circle the planet 22 times.

For a virtual tour of the planned "Cassini Grand Finale," CLICK HERE.

Thanks to Cassini, NASA has hundreds of gigabytes of information on Saturn and its moons, plus more than 3,000 scientific reports, the space agency reported in a separate release.

CLICK HERE to see a list of Cassini's 10 best discoveries and HERE for some of the probe's best images.

"Having a healthy, long-lived spacecraft at Saturn has afforded us a precious opportunity," Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, said in the release. "By having a decade there with Cassini, we have been privileged to witness never-before-seen events that are changing our understanding of how planetary systems form and what conditions might lead to habitats for life.

"It's incredibly difficult to sum up 10 extraordinary years of discovery in a short list, but it's an interesting exercise to think about what the mission will be best remembered for many years in the future."

Read more