Image shows Huygens landing site

Huygens probably landed in the area indicated by the circle

Scientists have identified the area of Saturn's moon Titan where the Huygens spacecraft touched down in new images released by the European Space Agency.

On Friday, the probe parachuted towards the surface, sending scientific data - including stunning images - to Earth.

Huygens had a rougher than expected ride through Titan's upper atmosphere, mission scientists have announced.

Nevertheless, the spacecraft made a safe "splat-down" on to a material likened to "crème brulée".

The area where Huygens landed appears to have a thin crust overlying a material with more uniform consistency something like mud.

Scientists have hypothesised that recent flooding of the site could be responsible for this.

Surprise, surprise

"I think the biggest surprise is that we survived landing and that we lasted so long," said Charles See, a scientist on Huygens' Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument.

"There wasn't even a glitch at impact. That landing was a lot friendlier than we anticipated."

The surface apparently shows "boulders" probably made of ice

The lens on Huygens' downward-looking high-resolution camera apparently accumulated some sort of material on it, suggesting the probe may have settled into the surface.

"Either that, or we steamed hydrocarbons off the surface and they collected on to the lens," said Dr See.

Mission scientists are constructing a "descent profile" for Huygens, which will show the probe's trajectory as it dived towards the surface.

They have already put together an animation - composed from images sent back by the probe - that show what a passenger riding on Huygens would have seen on the way down.

Members of the DISR team are working to refine the exact location of the probe's landing site, but they have made an initial estimate of where it lies.

Rocky ride

Titan is shrouded in an orange-coloured organic haze that obscures its surface features.

The probe rocked more than expected during its descent through Titan's high-altitude haze; it tilted at least 10 to 20 degrees.

Once it passed through the haze layer, the probe was more stable, tilting less than three degrees.

Marty Tomasko, principal investigator for the DISR, said his team was still investigating the reasons for the bumpy ride.

They are focussing on a suspected change in winds at an altitude of about 25km on Titan.

The $3.2bn Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons is a joint venture between the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (Asi).