Huygens arrived on Titan with a soft plop onto a sea of slushy half-frozen methane.

Many scientists believe this unpleasant goo also existed on Earth around the time life was formed, so anything learned from Titan could be applicable to Earth as well.

While cruising around Saturn in early October 2004, Cassini captured a series of images that have been composed into the largest, most detailed, global natural color view of Saturn and its rings ever made.

The Huygens probe spent most of its journey attached to a mother ship named Cassini. Cassini wasn’t designed to land on Saturn or Titan. Instead, it went into orbit around Saturn, taking eye-popping pictures of Saturn and its familiar rings.

Many of these photos are now on the JPL website for public download. Cassini will continue to fly for the next four years, making 74 orbits of Saturn and 44 fly-bys of Titan, swooping as low as 1200 kilometers.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a powerful example of cooperation between the scientific bodies of several countries. The Jet Propulsion Lab in the USA is responsible for the design, construction, and management of the Cassini orbiter. The European Space Agency was responsible for Huygens and the Italian Space Agency designed the spacecraft antennas.

Creating the antennas was no mean feat, given the tasks they were asked to perform. Huygens collected data as it dropped down toward Titan’s surface and during and after landing. Data signals were then transmitted to the orbiting Cassini, which re-transmitted them to Earth-based receivers.