Huygens Flight Performance Analyses: Parachutes Performance and Aerothermal aspects

The Huygens mission was the first, and currently the only, successful ESA mission to land a probe on another planet or moon. It was the most distant planetary landing to date by any space agency and will remain so for the foreseeable future. An industrial team comprising Vorticity Ltd, Fluid Gravity Engineering and the Von Karman Institute has carried out a study to examine aspects of the Huygens probe performance which were not as expected and to compile the lessons learned from the mission. The current work has helped to explain some of the anomalies identified during the mission which allows future missions to benefit from the results of Huygens. This document summarises the findings of the programme.