Huygens

Huygens was the first spacecraft to land in the outer solar system, descending through Titan’s thick nitrogen atmosphere for 2 hours and 27 minutes before touching down on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon. During descent, its cameras revealed a landscape strikingly similar to Earth — river channels, shorelines, and what appeared to be drainage networks — all carved by liquid methane instead of water. On the surface, it found a frozen plain at -179 C scattered with rounded ice pebbles and evidence of recent methane “rain.” It transmitted for 72 minutes from the surface before its batteries expired.