juliensimon/esa-huygens-titan-descent

ESA Huygens Titan Descent

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Part of the Solar System Datasets and Planetary Science Datasets collections on Hugging Face.

On January 14, 2005, the ESA Huygens probe made history as the first human-made object to land on a body in the outer Solar System. Released from the Cassini orbiter, Huygens descended through Titan's thick nitrogen-methane atmosphere for 2 hours 27 minutes, transmitting data from 160 km altitude down to the surface. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) captured images revealing drainage channels, shorelines, and a landscape shaped by liquid methane — evidence of an active hydrological cycle on another world. The Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) analyzed atmospheric composition during descent, while the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI) measured temperature, pressure, and density profiles. The Surface Science Package (SSP) recorded the impact and confirmed Huygens landed on a soft, damp surface — likely methane-saturated hydrocarbon sediment. This dataset is the only in-situ observation catalog from Titan's surface and atmosphere.

Dataset description

This dataset contains 13,995 observations across 8 instruments from the ESA Planetary Science Archive (PSA), conforming to the EPN-TAP standard. Each row represents one observation or data granule, with timing, spatial coverage, instrument parameters, and access URLs.

Instruments

• DISR: 12,024 observations
• GCMS: 1,606 observations
• HUYGENS_HK: 217 observations
• HASI: 118 observations
• SSP: 16 observations
• DTWG: 7 observations
• ACP: 4 observations
• DWE: 3 observations

Schema (key columns)

Column	Type	Description
granule_uid	string	Unique observation identifier
granule_gid	string	Group identifier
obs_id	string	Observation ID
dataproduct_type	string	Data product type (e.g. spectrum, image, profile)
target_name	string	Target body (Titan)
target_class	string	Target class (satellite)
instrument_name	string	Instrument name (DISR, GCMS, HASI, SSP, etc.)
time_min	float64	Observation start time (JD)
time_max	float64	Observation end time (JD)
c1min/c1max	float64	Spatial coordinate 1 range
c2min/c2max	float64	Spatial coordinate 2 range
spectral_range_min/max	float64	Spectral range bounds
processing_level	string	Data processing level
creation_date	string	Data product creation date
access_url	string	URL to access the data product
access_format	string	Data format (e.g. application/x-pds)

The full schema contains up to ~50 columns following the EPN-TAP standard.

Quick stats

• 13,995 total observations
• 8 instruments
• 1 distinct targets
• Time span: JD 2450574.5 – 2453385.3

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/esa-huygens-titan-descent", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Observations per instrument
print(df["instrument_name"].value_counts())

# DISR imaging observations
disr = df[df["instrument_name"] == "DISR"]
print(f"{len(disr):,} DISR observations")

# Filter by descent phase (time range)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df.groupby("instrument_name").size().sort_values(ascending=False).plot(kind="bar")
plt.title("Huygens observations by instrument")
plt.ylabel("Count")

Data source

ESA Planetary Science Archive — EPN-TAP service at https://psa.esa.int/psa-tap/tap/sync.

Related datasets

• esa-rosetta-observations — ESA Rosetta comet mission
• cassini — Cassini Saturn orbiter
• galileo-atmosphere — Galileo Jupiter atmospheric probe
• huygens-atmosphere — Huygens atmospheric profiles

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{huygens_titan_descent,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {ESA Huygens Titan Descent},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/esa-huygens-titan-descent},
  note = {Based on ESA Planetary Science Archive (PSA) EPN-TAP service}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0