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The Huygens probe was launched from the Cassini space craft, and on January 14th, 2005 the probe landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Titan is about 746 million miles (1.2 billion kilometres) from Earth and the largest of Saturn’s moons. The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

This picture was taken from the Cassini spacecraft as it sped outward from Saturn on its first orbit. At the left, Saturn’s shadow stretches almost completely across the rings, while at the right, the planet’s face is illuminated by the far-off sun.

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is one of largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built, and the third heaviest unmanned spacecraft ever launched into space. The craft is about the same size as a school bus, and weighs about 6,000 pounds, plus another 6,000 pounds of rocket fuel.

Huygens descended toward Titan by parachute for 2.5 hours, and hit the ground at about 10 mph. The craft was designed to float in case it landed in a river or lake, but it landed on Titan’s surface, which is like wet sand or clay.

It’s very cold on Titan. The temperature at the landing site was minus 291 degrees farentheit.When it rains on Titan, it doesn’t rain water, but methane. On Earth, methane is a highly flammable gas, but on Titan, it is liquid because of the intense pressure and cold. The liquid methane runs like water through riverbeds on Titan’s surface.