Datasets:

juliensimon
/

esa-huygens-titan-descent

license: other
license_name: cc-by-nc-3.0-igo
license_link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/igo/
pretty_name: ESA Huygens Titan Descent
language:
  - en
description: >-
  In-situ observation catalog from the ESA Huygens probe descent through Titan's
  atmosphere and landing (13,995 observations across 8 instruments). Static
  dataset from the ESA Planetary Science Archive.
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
tags:
  - space
  - titan
  - huygens
  - cassini
  - saturn
  - esa
  - planetary-science
  - atmosphere
  - open-data
  - tabular-data
  - parquet
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/huygens_observations.parquet
    default: true

ESA Huygens Titan Descent

Saturn and its rings, captured by the Cassini spacecraft

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-NC-3.0-IGO