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Originally Posted by Jerry
The purpose of the explosive is to blast the heat shield far away from Huygens. The whole structure was designed with this in mind.
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No. The explosive bolts are just for severing some connections. First, Hugens hung on the drogue chute. Then some bolts were cut and the rest dropped away from the back heatshield/drogue-chute assembly. Then the big main chute was ejected and then other bolts severed, so the main heatshield dropped away from the rest. No need to push some parts forcefully away from the rest by using explosives. I guess you confuse some stuff as the chute system was built by Martin-Baker, who has a pretty good reputation for their ejection seats. Or you confused it with the mortar which fires the chute through the wake of the probe so it could unfurl.
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Originally Posted by M
Huygens has no legs. It was not designed for landing. It was just the way that the impact parameters made it a possibility that Huygens may survive it, as it did.
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That's what I thought, but the animated descent sequence on the planetary society shows legs, as and they have been mentioned on the Huygens thread. The caption calls it "instrument configuration mode", so are they legs or not?
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Maybe you confuse some instrument booms or the penetrometer with a leg. But Huygens definitely hadn't legs for landing, as landing was not a goal of the mission.