Huygens, having descended through Titan’s atmosphere and landed safely on its surface, represents a success for the space community worldwide. Data collected reveals evidence of erosion by liquid methane and possibly rain. The presence of specific gases in the atmosphere suggests past volcanic activity generating not lava but water-ice and ammonia.
One of the most interesting early results is the descent profile of the probe into the atmosphere, which could be important for future, even more challenging space missions. With a temperature at ground level of about -180°C, the texture of Titan's surface resembles wet sand or clay with a thin solid crust, a mixture of dirty water-ice and dry ice.
Titan is being revealed as an extraordinary world, a natural laboratory where primitive Earth-like geophysical processes can be studied under completely different thermodynamic and chemical conditions.