What Happened When Huygens Landed On Titan Eight Years Ago

It was eight years ago on January 14, 2005 that the Huygens spacecraft descended through Titan’s murky atmosphere and touched down – if a bit precariously – by bouncing, sliding and wobbling across the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan. This was the first time a probe had touched down on an alien world in the outer Solar System.

But that surface wasn’t quite what we expected.

While earlier studies of data from Huygens determined the surface of Titan to be quite soft, scientists now think the surface the surface consisted of a hard outer crust but is soft underneath, so that if an object put more pressure on the surface, it sank in significantly.

“It is like snow that has been frozen on top,” said Erich Karkoschka, a co-author of a paper published in October 2012. “If you walk carefully, you can walk as on a solid surface, but if you step on the snow a little too hard, you break in very deeply.”