Computer Science
Scientific paper
Aug 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006iaujd..10e...8s&link_type=abstract
Progress in Planetary Exploration Missions, 26th meeting of the IAU, Joint Discussion 10, 21-22 August 2006, Prague, Czech Repub
Computer Science
Scientific paper
After a launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 9 November 2005 and a five-month cruise, the Venus Express spacecraft reached Venus on 11 April 2006. The spacecraft has now reached its final operational, 24 hour polar orbit, with apocentre altitude of 66000km and pericentre altitude of 250 km. During the first weeks of routine operation the spacecraft has already sent back a wealth of exiting information. Venus is thus again, after having been the `"forgotten planet" for more than a decade, target for intense studies to better understand the many problems not answered by the more than twenty US and Soviet probes launched in the previous decades. The objective of the Venus Express mission is to carry out a comprehensive study of the atmosphere of Venus, the plasma environment and its interaction with the solar wind, and to study certain aspects of the surface of the planet. A well optimised payload composed of two multi channel spectrometers, an IR-Vis-UV imaging spectrometer, a wide angle camera, a multi-sensor energetic particle instrument, a magnetometer, and a radio science experiment, allows all elements of the objectives to be addressed at a sufficient depth. Venus Express has been developed in record time, less than four years, using an efficient concept of re-using elements of recently developed spacecraft, mainly Mars Express and Rosetta. Significant savings for both the space and ground segments have been possible by using existing teams in industry, in ESA and in several of the science institutes involved. The first data has shown a highly dynamic atmosphere, including close-ups of the southern polar double vortex, indeed topics of high interest and among the top priority objectives. The high resolution spectrometers are finding several minor species at various depths of the atmosphere. Venus Express is the first mission fully exploiting the Infrared spectral windows, in order to map the atmosphere in three dimensions. The first data returned from the mission promises an exiting time to come with analysis of very high quality data from state of the art instrumentation.
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