Huygens a continuing success for ESA

Europe is quietly getting bullish on spaceflight.

Early Tuesday morning, NASA's Cassini space probe will fly by Saturn's largest moon, Titan, for the first time since releasing the ESA's Huygens probe to Titan's surface in January. The encounter highlights last month's Huygens landing, and comes days after the return to space of the ESA's Ariane 5 booster system.

An article in Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor revisits the success of Cassini and its European-built Huygens probe, which has become a milestone for the European Space Agency. Huygens is ESA's highest profile mission to date, and in the minds of some Europeans, it finally puts the ESA on par with the United States and Russia as a leading spacefaring entity.

According to the article, the success of Huygens has brought a new enthusiasm about spaceflight to European countries, where no such mood existed for space projects before.