Huygens lands on Titan!
14 January 2005
Today, after its seven-year journey through the Solar System on board the Cassini spacecraft, ESA's Huygens probe has successfully descended through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and safely landed on its surface.The first scientific data arrived at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, this afternoon at 16:19 UTC. Huygens is mankind’s first successful attempt to land a probe on another world in the outer Solar System. "This is a great achievement for Europe and its US partners in this ambitious international endeavour to explore the Saturnian system," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's Director General.
Following its release from Cassini on 25 December 2004, Huygens reached Titan's outer atmosphere after 20 days and a 4 million km cruise. The probe started its descent through Titan's hazy cloud layers from an altitude of about 1270 km at 10:13 UTC. During the following three minutes Huygens had to decelerate from 18 000 to 1400 km per hour.
A sequence of parachutes then slowed it down to less than 300 km per hour. At a height of about 160 km the probe's scientific instruments were exposed to Titan's atmosphere. At about 120 km, the main parachute was replaced by a smaller one to complete the descent, with an expected touchdown at 12:24 UTC. Preliminary data indicate that the probe landed safely, likely on a solid surface.
The probe began transmitting data to Cassini four minutes into its descent and continued to transmit data after landing at least as long as Cassini was above Titan's horizon. The certainty that Huygens was alive came at 10:25 UTC, when the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, USA, picked up a faint but unmistakable radio signal from the probe. Radio telescopes on Earth continued to receive this signal well past the expected lifetime of Huygens.
Note: all times are in Earth received time, which is 67 minutes after the actual event at Titan.
