Nine years ago today, the Huygens Probe was launched from Cassini

I just finished watching the third episode of Wonders of the Solar System this afternoon.  It started with Brian Cox taking a flight on the English Electric Lightening to the edge of the atmosphere.  I admired pictures of this airplane from the Hamlyn Children's Dictionary I poured over as a child.

There was also a segment about the meteorite that struck Saskatchewan in 2008.

The thing that caught my attention was when Cox said the Huygens probe of the ESA separated from Cassini and headed towards Saturn's moon, Titan, on Christmas Day 2004.  It actually landed on Titan's surface on 2005 January 14.

This picture taken by the Huygen's probe on Titan shows rocks that look similar to those in riverbeds on Earth. In fact, Titan is the only other place in the solar system that is known to have an earth-like atmosphere.  The difference is, since the gravity on Titan is much less than earth and it's much colder than earth (more than 10x farther away from the sun than earth), methane instead of water is what shapes Titan's atmosphere.  In fact, the only other lakes known in the solar system are found on Titan - lakes of methane.