Venus Express
Venus Express – Europe's first mission to our nearest planetary neighbour – was launched at 03.30 UTC on 9 November 2005. It entered Venusian orbit on 11 April 2006. Over the following few weeks a series of engine burns took place, until the spacecraft reached its final orbit on 7 May.
The spacecraft was launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, sent into space by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket.
Exploring Venus
Venus is the same size and almost the same mass as the Earth, but its proximity to the Sun makes it a hostile world. A thick and poisonous carbon dioxide atmosphere exerts a crushing pressure at the surface. As if this were not enough, it also results in a runaway 'greenhouse effect' giving Venus a surface temperature of 500°C
Venusian mysteries
The mission seeks to unravel some of the mysteries of the planet's atmosphere and surface. Venus Express is supplying scientific data that could help illustrate links and similarities between the Earth and Venus.
Volcanic activity is one of the areas Venus Express is focussed on. The image above of the volcano Sif Mons shows evidence for past activity in the form of a solidified lava flow that shows up in this image as a brighter streak down the sides of its cone. Planetary scientists would like to know if such eruptions are taking place today. The 3-D view of the surface of Venus was produced in a computer using radar data collected by NASA's Magellan probe in orbit during the early 1990s.
The image to the right is a composite image of the Venusian atmosphere from the VIRTIS instrument and centred on Venus' south pole.
The left half shows the day side of the planet and the right half is an infrared view of the night side. Most of the features are clouds at an altitude of about 55 km. The dark vortex is a mirror of a similar structure above the north pole of the planet.