science · 14 January 2005 · 20 years ago
In 2005, the Huygens space probe landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It had been released from the Cassini spacecraft when its orbit around Saturn converged with the path of Titan on 24 Dec 2004. In the first three photographs received from Huygens on the surface of Titan, scientists saw what resembled drainage channels, a shoreline, flooded regions surrounded by elevated terrain and a plain covered with large boulders, possibly of ice. The probe was named after Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch astronomer who first viewed Titan on 25 Mar 1655, the first of Saturn's moon to be discovered.
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