The Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency, was designed to study the composition and structure of Titan's atmosphere and to collect information about Titan's surface. The Huygens probe rode to Titan on board the Cassini spacecraft. It was released from the Orbiter on December 25, 2004, and cruised for 21 days before reaching Titan. The probe entered Titan's atmosphere on January 14, 2005, and collected data during its 2 hour, 27 minute, 13 second descent to the surface. It then collected data on the surface for an additional 1 hour, 12 minutes, 9 seconds. The Huygens Probe was equipped with six instruments designed to study the atmosphere and surface of Titan. More detailed information about the individual instruments and their data sets can be found below.

The Huygens data were delivered to the PDS on July 1, 2006. The PDS must still validate these data before they are considered archived, although the data may be put online provisionally while they are being validated. The PDS urges caution when using any data that have been released to PDS for less than three months. Also be aware that some of the links below may not yet be operational or may lead to incomplete web pages until the data have been delivered and validated.

The Huygens probe carried these instruments:

• ACP - Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyzer
• DISR - Descent Imager and Spectral Radiometer
• DWE - Doppler Wind Experiment
• GCMS - Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer
• HASI - Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument
• SSP - Surface Science Package
  

The Huygens data archive also contains these supporting datasets:

• HK - Huygens Housekeeping Data
• DTWG - Descent Trajectory Working Group

More information can be found on the Cassini/Huygens web site at JPL or the ESA Cassini-Huygens web site.

The Atmospheres Node is the PDS lead archiving node for Cassini and is responsible for archiving CIRS, UVIS, and RSS data from the Cassini Orbiter in addition to all of the Huygens probe data. The Huygens data are also being archived in the ESA Planetary Science Archive.

Instruments and Data

Follow the instrument links above to find information about the Huygens data products online.

Data from the Cassini mission are also available through PDS-D, the Planetary Data System online distribution service.

Subscribe to the PDS Subscription Service to be informed of new data releases.