Titan’s Surface

This poster shows a composite view from the descent imager/spectral radiometer taken while the European Space Agency's Huygens probe was setting on Titan's surface, juxtaposed with a similarly scaled picture taken on the Moon's surface. Objects near the center of the picture are roughly the size of a man's foot. Objects at the horizon are a fraction of a man's height. The Huygens image was taken on Jan. 14, 2005.

The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona