Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/U. Arizona; Music: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #4; YouTube Upload: djxatlanta,Explanation: What would it look like to land on Saturn’s moon Titan? The
European Space Agency‘s Huygens probe set down on the Solar System’s cloudiest moon in 2005, and a
time-lapse video of its descent images was created.
Huygens separated from the robotic
Cassini spacecraft soon after it achieved orbit around Saturn in late 2004 and began approaching
Titan. For two hours after arriving, Huygens plummeted toward
Titan‘s surface, recording at first only the shrouded moon’s opaque atmosphere. The computerized
truck-tire sized probe soon deployed a parachute to slow its decent, pierced the thick clouds, and began transmitting images of a
strange surface far below never before seen in visible light. Landing in a
dried sea and
surviving for 90 minutes, Huygen’s return unique images of a
strange plain of dark sandy soil strewn with smooth, bright, fist-sized rocks of ice.
