The first spacecraft to land on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005 was Huygens. The European Space Agency probe touched down on January 14, 2005, after separating from NASA’s Cassini orbiter and descending through Titan’s thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere by parachute.
Huygens was part of the joint Cassini–Huygens mission, launched from Earth on October 15, 1997. It was named for Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan in 1655. The probe carried instruments that measured Titan’s atmosphere, winds, surface conditions, and chemical composition while sending data to Cassini for relay to Earth.
The landing was designed to survive either a touchdown on solid ground or a splashdown in a hydrocarbon sea. Huygens ultimately landed on a solid surface near Titan’s Adiri region, surrounded by rounded water-ice pebbles. It transmitted data for roughly 90 minutes after landing and remains the only spacecraft to land on a moon other than Earth’s Moon and the farthest successful landing from Earth.