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This Day, That Year – November 9

Wed 09 Nov 2022    
EcoBalance
| 2 min read

This day in history we feature Venus Express. The European Space Agency launched the first Venus exploration mission on this day in 2005.

Trivia – Venus Express

The Venus Express (VEX) mission is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, it arrived at Venus in April 2006 and began continuously sending back science data from its polar orbit around Venus. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, the main objective of the mission was the long term observation of the Venusian atmosphere. The observation over such long periods of time had never been done in previous missions to Venus, and was key to a better understanding of the atmospheric dynamics. ESA concluded the mission in December 2014.

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The mission was proposed in 2001 to reuse the design of the Mars Express mission. However, some mission characteristics led to design changes: primarily in the areas of thermal control, communications and electrical power. The Venus Express mission also uses some spare instruments developed for the Rosetta spacecraft. The mission was proposed by a consortium led by D. Titov (Germany), E. Lellouch (France) and F. Taylor (United Kingdom). Venus Express studied the Venusian atmosphere and clouds in detail, the plasma environment and the surface characteristics of Venus from orbit. It also made global maps of the Venusian surface temperatures. Its nominal mission was originally planned to last for 500 Earth days (approximately two Venusian sidereal days), but the mission was extended five times: first on 28 February 2007 until early May 2009; then on 4 February 2009 until 31 December 2009; and then on 7 October 2009 until 31 December 2012. On 22 November 2010, the mission was extended to 2014. On 20 June 2013, the mission was extended a final time until 2015. On 28 November 2014, mission control lost contact with Venus Express. Intermittent contact was reestablished on 3 December 2014, though there was no control over the spacecraft, likely due to exhaustion of propellant. On 16 December 2014, ESA announced that the Venus Express mission had ended. A carrier signal was still being received from the vehicle, but no data was being transmitted. Mission manager Patrick Martin expected the spacecraft would fall below 150 kilometres (93 mi) in early January 2015, with destruction occurring in late January or early February. The spacecraft’s carrier signal was last detected by ESA on 18 January 2015.

Source – Wikipedia

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