Arrival of the Venus Express
10 April 2006
Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is about to receive its first European visitor. On 11 April, after a 400 million kilometre voyage through space, ESA's Venus Express spacecraft will brake into orbit around Earth’s mysterious sister world.
Before its 500-day mission of exploration can begin, the 1240 kg spacecraft must complete a complex series of operations and manoeuvres. This nail-biting, 10-day orbit insertion phase started on 4 April and is due to end on 13 April.
The objective of the Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) manoeuvre is to slow down the spacecraft’s speed. This critical manoeuvre must take place at exactly the right place and time, so that Venus Express can be captured by the planet’s gravity.
The first phase is to ensure that the spacecraft is ready. Then, on the morning of 11 April, starting at 09:17 (Central European Summer Time), the main engine will fire for about 50 minutes. This will enable capture to take place.
Once Venus Express is safely in orbit, ground controllers will re-start communications with Earth, and uplink the commands to be carried out during the first orbit.
The orbit insertion is controlled by a computer on the spacecraft, using a sequence of automatic commands that was sent to Venus Express four days before VOI started.
All of the spacecraft operations are handled by the Venus Express ground control team, located at ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.
For a detailed timeline and updates, visit the Venus Express website at http://venus.esa.int
