Latest Venus Express Stories
DARMSTADT, Germany -- The launch of the European Space Agency's "Venus Express" spacecraft has been delayed after technicians discovered contamination in the Russian-made launcher, an ESA official said on Monday.Europe's first mission to Venus was scheduled for Wednesday but will be delayed for several days while tests are carried out on the Soyuz-Fregat launcher, a spokesman at the agency's European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt said.The tests on the covering of the carrier...
ESA -- A dense curtain of mysteries surrounding Venus, the hot and hazy sister planet to Earth, awaits to be opened after the launch of Venus Express, the next planetary probe of the European Space Agency. On Wednesday, 26 October 2005, the sky over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, will be illuminated by the blast from a Soyuz-Fregat rocket carrying this precious spacecraft aloft. The celestial motion of the planets in our Solar System has given Venus Express the window to travel to...
ESA -- ESA's new deep space radio antenna in Cebreros (Ãvila, Spain) will be officially inaugurated on 28 September. The new 35-metre antenna is ESA's second facility devoted to communications with spacecraft on interplanetary missions or placed in very distant orbits. Cebreros' first task will be that of tracking ESA's Venus Express spacecraft, due for launch in October. Up until three years ago, for missions requiring such a facility, ESA had to rely on NASA's Deep Space Network....
ESA -- ESA has started a technical investigation into the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on board Mars Express, after a problem developed in the instrument a few months ago. Vibration effects (induced by spacecraft activities) have been suggested as a cause for the observed behaviour. However no source has yet been identified and other causes internal to the instrument cannot be fully ruled out. In order to establish the exact cause of the problem, ESA's Mars Express team is setting...
ESA -- ESA's Venus Express spacecraft has just completed its last phase of testing in Europe and is ready to be shipped to its launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. One and a half years after its sister spacecraft Mars Express arrived at Mars, Europe's newest planetary probe is ready to depart on the first leg of its journey to Earth's own sister planet, the mysterious Venus. Venus Express was proposed in 2001, as a mission concept to take as much as possible of the Mars...
ESA -- Venus Express, the first European space probe to investigate the planet Venus has completed the development, integration and test phase in Toulouse. Venus Express is being manufactured by EADS Astrium as prime contractor for ESA (European Space Agency). The research probe is scheduled for launch on board a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) in late October 2005. EADS is the principal shareholder of Starsem, the launch provider, with 35%, Arianespace holding...
PARIS (AFP) -- Weather permitting, astronomers should get a good view of Rosetta tonight, a spacecraft designed to rendezvous with a comet in deep space in one of the most ambitious ventures in space exploration. The billion-euro (1.3-billion-dollar) craft, launched just over a year ago, will be passing overhead at just 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) as it uses the Earth's gravitational force as a slingshot to help it team up with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. After sunset in Europe on...
Counting down the top ten astrobiology stories for 2004 highlights the accomplishments of those exploring Mars, Saturn, comets, and planets beyond Pluto. Number eight in this countdown was the Mars Express mission, the most complete study of martian topography and water from below the surface to the upper atmosphere. Astrobiology Magazine -- Number eight on the countdown of 2004 highlights was the assembly of the Mars satellite constellation. With two surface rovers active, even more...
