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Ten years ago today one of the most remarkable moments in human history took place, when the Huygens probe landed on Saturn's largest moon - Titan

It remains the only landing of a spacecraft in the outer solar system to date - and to celebrate the accomplishment Nasa has released a stunning video visualising the approach.

It shows what the probe would have seen as it approached the moon and passed through the atmosphere, before finally coming to rest in a dried-up methane riverbed.

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This incredible image of Titan was returned by the Huygens spacecraft from six miles (10km) high as it made its way to the surface on 15 January 2005. It revealed highlands and darker areas, and also channels thought to have been carved by lakes and rivers of liquid methane at some point in the past

The Cassini-Huygens mission, which launched on 15 October 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is a joint project between Nasa, Esa and the Italian space agency - ASI.

The Huygens probe itself was built and operated by Esa.

The video, made using real images from Cassini and Huygens, begins at a great distance from Titan and Saturn, a 'billion times further' than the final view at the surface according to the narrator.

As the camera zooms in, the definition of the shadows on Saturn can be noticed, cast by its rings, and Titan's brown hazy atmosphere can also be seen..

The camera then begins to move down onto the moon, showing light regions - highlands - and dark regions, which are mostly dune fields.

The probe also measured colour on the surface using spectrometres, which is exaggerated as the camera approaches the surface.

Most of Titan's surface is brown, and its atmosphere is so thick that it is darker on the surface during the day that it is on Earth during an extremely cloudy day.

During its descent Huygens also revealed a complicated system of channels where rivers of methane were thought to have once flowed.

Other regions on the moon still have rivers and lakes of this thick substance.

This animation shows a sped-up view of the approach and landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan ten years ago on 15 January 2005. Credit: Nasa

The Cassini-Huygens mission, which launched on 15 October 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is a joint project between Nasa, Esa and the Italian space agency - ASI. The Huygens probe itself, shown here in an artist's illustration, was built and operated by Esa

It is now ten years since Esa's Huygens probe landed on Titan. To celebrate the achievement Nasa released a video visualisation using real images taken by the probe. This graphic reveals some of the stats about Titan. While the Huygens prove is now dead, Cassini continues to flyby the moon every month or so

NASA re-creates the Titan probe landing using real images

Perhaps the most amazing image of Titan by Huygens is this one from the surface, showing pebbles that have been rounded by liquids

The descent on 15 January 2005 lasted a total of two hours, with Huygens landing on a frigid floodplain surrounded by icy cobblestones.

It is the only landing that has ever been performed in the outer solar system to date, and one of only a handful of bodies - the others being Venus, Mars, the moon, two asteroids and most recently a comet - that manmade probes have ever landed on.

On the surface the probe continued to send back data for more than an hour, until its batteries were drained.

Since that historic moment, scientists have pored over volumes of data about Titan sent back to Earth.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the results over the years have shown Titan to be a somewhat Earth-like world - at least, the most Earth-like in the solar system aside from our own.

'A mission of this ambitious scale represents a triumph in international collaboration,' said Earl Maize, Cassini Project manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

'From the mission's formal beginning in 1982, to Huygens' spectacular landing 23 years later, to the present day, Cassini-Huygens owes much of its success to the tremendous synergy and cooperation between more than a dozen countries.

'This teamwork is still a major strength of the project as the Cassini orbiter continues to explore the Saturn system.'

This illustration shows how the Huygens probe made its descent to the surface. After passing through the atmosphere a parachute was used to slow its descent. The descent on 15 January 2005 lasted a total of two hours, with Huygens landing on a frigid floodplain surrounded by icy cobblestones

This picture of Titan, taken by Huygens on its way to the surface, showed what appeared to be channels that were once carved by lakes and rivers. It is now thought that Titan has highly viscous bodies of water on its surface composed of liquid methane, as evidenced by further radar imaging of the surface

Ben Biggs, editor of All About Space Magazine, added: 'The successful landing of Huygens on Saturn's moon Titan has to be one of my personal highlights in the history of human space exploration.

'The lander might have only sent back an hour and a half or so of data before the Cassini orbiter lost contact with it, but in that time the world got a glimpse of exactly what was beneath the previously impenetrable cloud layer of Saturn's biggest moon: lakes of liquid methane, ice volcanoes and an otherwise surprisingly terrestrial moon.

'It returned the only image we've taken from the surface of an object in the Outer Solar System, it's the only lander that's successfully touched-down on a moon or planet this far away, plus it was made by Esa too.

'It's just nice to have such a successful and high-profile mission that we can call our own, in a scientific field that's dominated by Nasa.'

While Huygens might have long since passed away, the hugely successful Cassini mission is continuing around the Saturninan system.

It will continue observing the gas giant and its moons until 2017, when it will be sent burning up in the atmosphere of Saturn as it runs out of fuel to prevent it crashing on and contaminating any of its moons.