Celebrating the fifth anniversary of Huygens Titan touchdown

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of Huygens? Titan touchdown - 14 January 2010 - Five years ago today, ESA's Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Today planetary scientists from around the world have gathered in Barcelona to discuss the legacy of Huygens and to consider future Titan exploration missions. At 13:34 CET on 14 January 2005, Huygens became the most distant manmade object to land on another world. During its descent and landing, it beamed back to the Cassini spacecraft around four hours? worth of invaluable scientific data, revealing Titan to be a world with both striking similarities to and alien differences from Earth. Huygens arrived at Titan following a seven-year voyage attached to the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft. It then spent 2 hours and 28 minutes descending by parachute through Titan's atmosphere, blasted by winds of up to 430 km/h. Once it touched down, Huygens spent another 70 minutes transmitting more data before the Cassini spacecraft moved out of range.