Venus Express during assembly, with PFS

Venus Express shown during assembly and integration at Alenia Spazio, Italy, on 8 September 2004, with the PFS instrument visible.

The PFS (Planetary Fourier Spectrometer) instrument for the Venus Express satellite was originally conceived and designed by a team of Russian scientists at IKI (Russian Space Research Institute). Such an instrument is successfully flying on Mars Express and will be launched again to study Venus. The Italian investigators from the CNR's Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario who are staging this experiment work in co-operation with the Russians.