6 June

2003: On 6 June 2003, an Italian-led team of European scientists and engineers tackled the challenges of testing the reliability, behaviour, and response of some of the Huygens probe's instruments in actual operation. The Huygens probe, part of the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission, would be descending to Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005.

Using a combination of balloon and parachute, the team had a creative way of testing a full-scale replica of the probe — they dropped it from 33 kilometres above the Earth. Scientists gathered at the Italian Space Agency's Trapani balloon-launch facility in Sicily. To launch the 500-kilogram gondola carrying the mock-up Huygens space probe, they used a helium balloon. When the balloon reached a height of 33 kilometres, a release mechanism opened and dropped the probe.

The on-board parachute deployed to slow the probe's fall from 40 metres per second to just 4 metres per second. At that speed, the probe floated gently back to Earth, taking about 30 minutes to complete its journey beneath the ten-metre-wide parachute. This parachute was designed to provide a fall speed very close to the one expected at Titan.