Christiaan Huygens Research Paper

The atmospheric entry probe Huygens became the first spacecraft to land on a body in the outer solar system when it landed on Saturn’s moon Titan on 14 January 2005. Titan, which was discovered by Christiaan Huygens in 1655 after whom the probe was named, is the only moon of Saturn that has an atmosphere. This atmosphere was found to be impenetrable by Voyager 2s imaging probes, and was believed to resemble Earth’s primeval atmosphere, making it a prime target for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) probe. Huygens’s objectives included studying the composition of Titan’s atmosphere and land; determining the existence of water bodies on Titan, including their size, composition, and properties; observing weather patterns on Titan; and search for
Although the probe was capable of landing in either a solid or liquid body, ultimately it had a wobbly landing on a solid surface.
The probe was expected to function for approximately two hours, and therefore, needed a wide array of tools to quickly study Titan both during the descent and after the landing. To power all of the equipment, Huygens had a chemical battery, which had the added benefit of warming the probe up so it could withstand Titan’s chilling −179 °C atmosphere. The first equipment package, called the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI), contained various sensors to measure the properties of the atmosphere. Some of the sensors included a 3-axis accelerometer (ACC) to measure atmosphere deceleration (to calculate the atmosphere’s density and weather properties) and the landing impact, the Pressure Profile Instrument (PPI) to measure atmospheric pressure, Temperature Sensors (TEM) to measure atmospheric temperature, and the Permittivity, Wave & Altimetry (PWA) was used to measure atmospheric electric conductivity, lightning, ion conductivity, acoustic noise due to
Huygens discovered Titan’s many similarities to Earth’s atmosphere, including its dynamic atmosphere, Earth-like landscape, and hydrological cycle. Titan was found to have an atmosphere primarily composed of Nitrogen, with Methane being the second most prominent gas, which is constantly resupplied by nitrogen and carbon reservoirs. The ACP also discovered a complex layering of unidentified organic aerosols, which are particles dispersed in gas, throughout the atmosphere. One of Huygens’s major goals was identifying and measuring complex carbon molecules using the GCMS sensor, and it succeeded in doing so, as it found methane, ethylene, acetylene, acetylene, ethane, and hydrogen cyanide between the altitudes of 450 to 1600 km. The abundance of these final five listed molecules peaked at around 600 to 750 km, below which methane was the only identifiable carbonaceous molecule. There was also evidence that nitrogen was not delivered to Titan as molecular nitrogen, but rather, as ammonia that converted into nitrogen, which is the primary constituent of Titan’s atmosphere. Due to photolysis by solar radiation, nitrile gases form in Titan’s atmosphere, and this alongside the evidence of carbon molecules, evidence of water ice and evidence of carbon dioxide ice may lead to reactions that resembled those that happened on pre-biotic Earth. Titan’s DISR probe observed the bright coloured