Venus Express - Important Events and Discoveries

Important Events and Discoveries

• 3 August 2005: Venus Express completed its final phase of testing at Astrium Intespace facility in Toulouse, France. It flew on a Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft via Moscow, before arriving at Baikonur on 7 August.
• 7 August 2005: Venus Express arrived at the airport of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• 16 August 2005: First flight verification test completed.
• 22 August 2005: Integrated System Test-3.
• 30 August 2005: Last Major System Test Successfully Started.
• 5 September 2005: Electrical Testing Successful.
• 21 September 2005: FRR (Fuelling Readiness Review) Ongoing.
• 12 October 2005: Mating to the Fregat upper stage completed.
• 21 October 2005: Contamination detected inside the fairing — launch on hold.
• 5 November 2005: Arrival at launch pad.
• 9 November 2005: Launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 03:33:34 UTC.
• 11 November 2005: First trajectory correction maneuver successfully performed.
• 17 February 2006: The main engine is fired successfully in a dress rehearsal for the arrival maneuver.
• 24 February 2006: Second trajectory correction maneuver successfully performed.
• 29 March 2006: Third trajectory correction maneuver successfully performed - on target for 11 April orbit insertion.
• 7 April 2006: Command stack for orbit insertion maneuver is loaded on the spacecraft.
• 11 April 2006: The Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) is completed successfully, according to the following timeline:

	spacecraft time (UTC)	ground receive time (UTC)
Liquid Settling Phase start	07:07:56	07:14:41
VOI main engine start	07:10:29	07:17:14
pericentre passage	07:36:35
eclipse start	07:37:46
occultation start	07:38:30	07:45:15
occultation end	07:48:29	07:55:14
eclipse end	07:55:11
VOI burn end	08:00:42	08:07:28

Period of this orbit is nine days.

• 13 April 2006: First images of Venus from Venus Express released.
• 20 April 2006: Apocentre Lowering Manoeuvre #1 performed. Orbital period is now 40 hours.
• 23 April 2006: Apocentre Lowering Manoeuvre #2 performed. Orbital period is now approx 25 hours 43 minutes.
• 26 April 2006: Apocentre Lowering Manoeuvre #3 is slight fix to previous ALM.
• 7 May 2006: Venus Express entered its target orbit at apocentre at 13:31 UTC
• 14 December 2006: First temperature map of the southern hemisphere.
• 27 February 2007: ESA agrees to fund mission extension until May 2009.
• 19 September 2007: End of the nominal mission (500 Earth days) - Start of mission extension.
• 27 November 2007: The scientific journal Nature publishes a series of papers giving the initial findings. It finds evidence for past oceans. It confirms the presence of lightning on Venus and that it is more common on Venus than it is on Earth. It also reports the discovery that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole of the planet.
• 20 May 2008: The detection by the VIRTIS instrument on Venus Express of hydroxyl (OH) in the atmosphere of Venus is reported in the May 2008 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
• 4 February 2009: ESA agrees to fund mission extension until 31 December 2009.
• 7 October 2009: ESA agrees to fund the mission through 31 December 2012.
• 23 November 2010: ESA agrees to fund the mission through 31 December 2014.
• 25 August 2011: It is reported that a layer of ozone exists in the upper atmosphere of Venus.