As the large amount of data collected by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its descent onto Titan is being processed, new views of this fascinating world become available.

After flying 2 billion miles, a probe to Saturn's moon will attempt what has never been tried before. The Huygens' probe will plunge into Titan and its mysterious atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Whether it will crash or splash has become of extreme scientific interest to those watching the controlled collision.

In high-resolution, an ancient martian basin called Huygens shows evidence of sediment filling, erosion and dendritic patterns characteristic of water run-off.

A SPACE craft the size of a bus began a historic four-year mission to explore Saturn and its moons yesterday. The Cassini probe slipped through two of Saturn's rings and set itself in orbit around the giant planet.

SATURN looms breathtakingly close in this dramatic new image from the Cassini spacecraft, which is due to rendezvous with the ringed planet on 1 July.