Huygens: 'Ground Truth' From an Alien Moon

“The Huygens images were everything our images from orbit were not. Instead of hazy, sinuous features that we could only guess were streams and drainage channels, here was incontrovertible evidence that at some point in Titan’s history — and perhaps even now — there were flowing liquid hydrocarbons on the surface. Huygens’ images became a Rosetta stone for helping us interpret our subsequent findings on Titan.” — Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado

“Cassini and Huygens have shown us that Titan is an amazing world with a landscape that mimics Earth in many ways. During its descent, the Huygens probe captured views that demonstrated an entirely new dimension to that comparison and highlights that there is so much more we have yet to discover. For me, Huygens has emphasized why it is so important that we continue to explore Titan.”
– Alex Hayes, a Cassini scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

“Twelve years ago, a small probe touched down on an orangish, alien world in the outer solar system, marking humankind’s most distant landing to date. Studying Titan helps us tease out the potential of habitability of this tiny world and better understand the chemistry of the early Earth.” — Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters, Washington

A collection of Huygens’ top science findings is available from ESA at: http://sci.esa.int/huygens-titan-science-highlights

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

 More information about Cassini: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Contacts and sources:
Preston Dyches, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Markus Bauer, ESA