On January 14th, 2005, the European space agency's,
Huygens probe plummeted through the thick clouds of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
It successfully landed on the mysterious surface more than 2 hours later, capturing image after
image for 72 minutes, before losing contact with its mother spacecraft, Cassini, its only
link to Earth, that was orbiting Saturn above.
During this short time falling through the skies of Titan and landing on its almost familiar
surface, Huygens managed to transmit hundreds of incredible images revealing the large moon
like never before.
More than 17 years later, these images are still the best we have from the surface of
Titan.
The solar system's most Earth-like moon.
Huygens was the first and currently only spacecraft to successfully land on another world in the
outer solar system.
It made the epic seven-year-long voyage to Saturn attached to the side of NASA's Cassini
spacecraft, before being released and dropped into the thick haze that surrounds the mysterious
moon.
When the Huygens probe plunged into Titan's opaque atmosphere in 2005, no one knew what
to expect.
Would it splash down into a deep alien ocean?
Sink into a pit quicksand?
Crash into jagged rocks or tumble off a steep ravine?
One thing was for sure, Titan was a mystery.
Aside from a very brief pass by Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 many years before
little was known about the large moon.
What the Huygens descent probe would find was anyone’s guess.
Titan's thick atmosphere makes it extraordinarily difficult to study from afar.
Through most of our telescopes, it looks like a fuzzy orange ball.
But thanks to Cassini and Huygens, we know now that Titan is a moon unlike any other.
In a strange way, Titan may be the most Earth-like world out there.
It is the only other place we know of that has liquid on its surface, but in Titan’s
case, it is not water as we know it, but instead, mostly liquid methane, which fills up seas,
flows in rivers, and even rains down from the sky.
It’s so cold there, however, that life as we know it couldn't exist, in fact, the mountains
and valleys are made of water ice frozen harder than granite.
So on a world shrouded by an atmosphere so thick, its surface could not be seen, how
could Huygens survive a landing?
Well, the mission wasn't actually to land the probe, but instead to investigate Titan's
atmosphere, including its chemical properties, wind, temperature and pressure.
However, on the off chance, the spacecraft did manage to land, the mission team designed
the craft for multiple conditions.
Engineers built Huygens light enough to float, just in case it splashed down into an ocean
and with enough battery life to operate for at least a short while on the surface, assuming
it survived the impact.
But overall, Huygens was designed as a descent probe that would collect all of its primary
science during a fall through Titan’s atmosphere.
Whatever it did or didn’t see afterwards would be a scientific bonus.
As Huygens plunged into Titans clouds and deployed its parachute, its cameras began
capturing incredible images of its descent.
This footage was created from those images and reveals in just a few minutes what Huygens
saw during its 2 hours and 27-minute journey through the thick smog-like haze.
At first, only an orangey brown blur is visible, but as the probe falls deeper and the cloud
starts to clear at around 30 miles above the surface, which is about 50 kilometres above
the surface, large never before-seen features are slowly revealed.
A dark valley can be seen between brighter hilly regions.
Beyond the hills to the left, two dark parallel lines are visible, which are part of a vast
system of dunes that cover the moon.
A complex network of drainage channels can be seen cutting through the hillside, a possible
cause of methane rain pouring down its slopes.
Unfortunately, Huygens had a problem in the communications program during the mission
that limited the number of images it could transmit to Cassini from 700 to only 376.
Meaning that nearly half of the images taken were lost forever.
But the images it did manage to send still allow us to see below the clouds of Titan
in unprecedented detail, taking Titan from a fuzzy orange ball to a fully realised world,
in the span of just a few hours.
After its turbulent descent, Huygens landed safely on the surface.
Luckily it didn't crash into sharp rocks or hard ice, or splash into one of Titan's many
lakes or seas.
Instead, it gently dropped down onto a bed of what looks like soft wet sand made of ice
grains.
This is the only view from the surface of Titan ever captured.
The image reveals a flat plain surrounded by scattered pebbles.
While the image shows no sign of current surface liquid, the region does strongly resemble
a dried-up lake or river bed.
In the distance, on the horizon, small rolling hills are visible and all the pebbles scattered
across the landscape are made of water ice frozen as hard as rock.
At the landing sight, Huygens measured a temperature of -180 degrees Celsius, which is -292 degrees
Fahrenheit, with very little wind and no visible cloud structures in the sky, just thick haze.
After 72 minutes of communication from the surface of Titan, eventually, Cassini and
so the link to Earth disappeared over the horizon.
A short time later and Huygens batteries would run out, and the probe would have quietly
shut down.
Although Huygens only lasted for a few hours, it revealed something incredible, a frozen
moon in the outer solar system that is more like Earth than anyone could have ever imagined.
And now that we know about Titan's methane seas, and chemically complex atmosphere, future
missions are being developed that will explore the moon like never before.
NASA is preparing to take the exploration of Titan to the next level with the Dragonfly
mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2027, arriving at Titan in 2034.
Dragonfly is a small drone designed to cover more ground than a traditional lander or rover
by making short flights around Titan’s surface.
Similar to the recent Ingenuity mission on Mars.
Its main goals are to figure out whether Titan is, or ever has been, habitable, look for
complex chemistry, and even check if there are signs that this hazy world has actually
hosted life.
Dragonfly will also be equipped with Dragon cam, a set of microscopic and panoramic cameras
that will image Titan's terrain.
Bringing us new views of this extraordinary moon.
But for now, the stunning images captured all those years ago by Huygens are the best
we have when it comes to seeing below the clouds of Titan.
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