The world's first glimpse of the surface of the Saturn moon Titan revealed an unexpected mix of icy land and liquid as the Huygens space probe touched down yesterday.
The first three photos of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, beamed back yesterday afternoon, showed what appeared to be boulders of ice, drainage channels, shorelines and islands, reminding scientists of both Earth and Mars.
"I think none of us would have expected ... this kind of unveiling, but it is pretty consistent with the surprises we've seen before," said Mr Al Diaz, NASA's associate administrator for science.
The $3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint project of NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to study Saturn, its rings, moons and magnetosphere.
In December, the Saturn explorer Cassini dropped off Huygens for a three-week journey toward Titan, culminating in the probe's parachute-slowed plunge to the moon's surface.
Huygens took more than two hours to float to the surface, where it defied expectations of a quick death and continued to transmit for at least two hours.