The Huygens landing: one year on One year ago this week, on 14
January 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe reached the upper layer of
Titan’s atmosphere and landed on the surface after a parachute
descent 2 hours and 28 minutes later. As part of the joint
NASA/ESA/ASI mission to Saturn and its moons, the Huygens probe
was sent from the Cassini spacecraft to explore Titan, Saturn’s
largest moon. Titan’s organic chemistry may be like that of the
primitive Earth around 4000 million years ago, and may hold
clues about how life began on our planet. Huygens audio- and
videocasts You can also download ESA audio and video content on
this topic. You can listen to the Podcast with an MP3 player, or
view the Vodcast using a player such as itunes. The Huygens
mission The Huygens mission has been an outstanding engineering
and scientific success, one of the most complex and
scientifically rewarding space missions to date. The touchdown
on the surface of Titan marked the farthest a man-made
spacecraft has successfully landed away fr