Celebrating the fifth anniversary of Huygens’ Titan touchdown 14 Five years ago today, ESA’s Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Today planetary scientists from around the world have gathered in Barcelona to discuss the legacy of Huygens and to consider future Titan exploration missions. |
At 13:34 CET on 14 January 2005, Huygens became the most distant manmade object to land on another world. During its descent and landing, it beamed back to the Cassini spacecraft around four hours’ worth of invaluable scientific data, revealing Titan to be a world with both striking similarities to and alien differences from Earth.
Huygens arrived at Titan following a seven-year voyage attached to the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft. It then spent 2 hours and 28 minutes descending by parachute through Titan’s atmosphere, blasted by winds of up to 430 km/h. Once it touched down, Huygens spent another 70 minutes transmitting more data before the Cassini spacecraft moved out of range. The Huygens signal then continued to be received for another 2 hours by a network of radio telescopes on Earth.
The Huygens measurements have provided planetary scientists with a rich library of measurements from which to extract information, in conjunction with the wealth of data acquired by Cassini in more than 60 Titan flybys to date. Huygens sampled the chemical constituents and the physical conditions of the atmosphere and surface. All of this can now be compared with laboratory work, 'analogue substances' and computer modelling to interpret the data fully. Analogue substances are created on Earth to mimic material found on Titan.
First images from Huygens, 14 January 2005 |
Drainage, flow and erosion on the Huygens landing site |
The discovery by Cassini of equatorial dune fields of this sandy stuff allowed Huygens’ landing site to be pinpointed because Huygens saw two dunes, which could be matched to the larger image.
Together, the six scientific instruments carried by Huygens provided the ‘ground truth’ which now forms the bedrock of all subsequent investigations into Saturn’s largest moon. For example, the Cassini spacecraft has five more flybys planned for this year.
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During the descent |
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