* Astronomy

Report for Period 23 July to 29 July 2006
During the reporting period the mission operations have been conducted according to the plan. The ground and the space segment performance have been nominal with the exception of a few telemetry outages at the ground station due to a loss of lock.

Read more

On 20 April 2006, after its first 9-day, elongated orbit around Venus, ESA’s Venus Express started to get closer to the planet, until it reached its final 24-hour long orbit on 7 May. During this time, and up to today, the spacecraft has been working relentlessly: the new data coming in are already providing first glimpses on planetary features never seen before.



If taking the first ever clear images of the double-eye vortex at Venus’ south pole - imaged by Venus Express during its very first orbit - was already a first in the history of planetary exploration and a very pleasant surprise for the scientists, nobody could expect that the vortex had a structure even more complicated than possibly foreseen.

Infrared images taken by the Ultraviolet/Visible/Near-Infrared spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board the spacecraft not only provided the first clear view of the vortex, but also gave a much closer insight into it when Venus Express flew over the south pole at the end of May this year.

Read more

At 21:49 CEST on 6th May, when the spacecraft communicated to Earth through ESA’s ground station at New Norcia (Australia), the Venus Express ground control team at ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany) received advanced confirmation that final orbit was to be successfully achieved about 18 hours later.

Launched on 9 November 2005, Venus Express arrived to destination on 11 April 2006, after a five-month interplanetary journey to the inner solar system. The initial orbit – or ‘capture orbit’ – was an ellipse ranging from 330 000 kilometres at its furthest point from Venus surface (apocentre) to less than 400 kilometres at its closest (pericentre).

Source

-- Edited by Blobrana at 20:54, 2006-05-09

European scientists have released the first photos of Venus' South Pole from their orbiting Venus Express spacecraft — revealing a swirling twist of cloud that closely resembles cloud formations around the more familiar North Pole.
The image, taken from a distance of roughly 206,452km and released by the European Space Agency, shows pale yellow clouds ribbed with darker spirals and a dark vortex.

The pictures were captured on 12 April by the Virtis (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) and Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) instruments aboard the spacecraft.
The Virtis image is a false-colour, composite view, while the VMC picture is imaged in ultraviolet.

"We can see there is a twister here that is similar to that which we know from the north pole" - Horst Uwe Keller, who leads the team operating the craft's wide-angle, multichannel camera.

The images were taken one day after Venus Express went into orbit around the planet.


Expand (248kb, 705 x 724)
Composite, false-colour view of Venus South Pole captured by VIRTIS 12 April 2006 onboard Venus Express.
Credits: ESA/INAF-IASF, Rome, Italy, and Observatoire de Paris, France


ESA controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, switched on each instrument individually to make sure they had all survived after burning the craft's main engine to slow it down so it could be captured by Venus' gravity.
Over the next several weeks, scientists will run more thorough tests on the instruments, designed to help researchers better understand the atmosphere and climate of Earth's neighbour. By June, they expect to have all instruments functioning fully.
As the spacecraft tightens its orbit in the coming months, scientists expect it to capture more detailed and revealing images of Venus from a distance of only about 150 km.
Using infrared technology that allows the camera to peer though the clouds, scientists hope to be able to determine how the clouds of sulphuric acid that swathe the planet were formed and pinpoint the cause of the ultra high-speed winds that send them swirling.

"I think that the decisive question will be to discover the dynamic of the atmosphere. Why are the clouds turning in the direction that we see? Why so quickly?" - Horst Uwe Keller.

The euro220-million mission, the first to Venus since NASA sent up Magellan in 1989, aims to study the greenhouse effect on the planet, where the atmosphere is extremely hot and dense.
It also hopes to learn what caused the planet's volcanic resurfacing some 500 million years ago and whether there is any volcanic or seismic activity taking place today.

Read more