Venus Express (VEX)

ODE: Venus

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Venus Express is ESA's first mission to Venus. It reuses the design of the Mars Express spacecraft. Many of the instruments are simply upgraded versions of those developed for ESA's Mars Express and Rosettamissions. The scientific objectives of the mission is to study the atmosphere, the plasma environment, and the surface of Venus in great detail.

Venus Express was launched by a Soyuz-Fregat launcher from the Baikonour Cosmodrome on November 9, 2005. After separation, Venus Express, of mass 1244 kg,was placed into an interplanetary transfer orbit during approximately 150 days. After a 153 day cruise to Venus the spacecraft entered Venusian orbit on April 11, 2006. The first capture orbit was an eccentric polar and lasted 9 days. Several manoeuvres over the period April 15- May 6, 2006 lowered the spacecraft into its operational orbit: a 24-hour elliptical, quasi-polar orbit. The pericentre altitude is 250 kms and the apocentre altitude is 66000 kms.

Pericentre altitude 250 km
Apocentre altitude 66000 km
Period 24 h
Inclination ~90 deg
Pericentre latitude 80 deg

The mission has been described in many papers [ESA 2005; HUNTER 2004]. Details about the mission launch sequence and timeline can be obtained from the Mission Calendar [Dauvin, 2005] and from the Consolidated Report on Mission Analysis (CREMA)[VEX-ESC-RP-5500, Sanchez and Rodriguez, 2005]. After eight years in orbit, as propellant supplies to maintain its elliptical orbit began running low, routine science experiments were concluded May 15, 2014.

Key components of the Venus Express payload include the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS), Analyser of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA), Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), Magnetometer (MAG), Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer (SPICAV/SOIR), Venus Radio Science Experiment (VeRa), and Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC). All source data are available on the ESA website. Venus ODE has added metadata of VIRTIS and MAG to facilitate searching in ODE.

 

More information about the VEX mission can be found in:

  • Dauvin,I., VENUS EXPRESS Mission Calendar, VEX-ESC-TN-5002, Issue 1, May 24, 2005.

  • ESA, Venus Express Launched, ESA Bulletin, Vol. 124, pp1-105, Nov 15, 2005.

  • Hunter, C.J., Venus Express Chemical Propulsion System - The Mars Express Legacy, In Proceedings of the 4th International Spacecraft Propulsion Conference (ESA SP-555), held on the 2-9 June, Chia Laguna (Cagliari), Oct 15, 2004.

  • Sanchez Perez, J.M., and J. Rodriguez Canabal, VEX-ESC-RP-5500: Venus Express: Consolidated Report on Mission Analysis (CREMA), Issue 3, April 2005.

  • D.V. Titov, F.W. Taylor, and H. Svedhem, Introduction to the special section on Venus Express: Results of the Nominal Mission, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 113, Issue E5, May 2008. doi:10.1029/2008JE003202