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Post Info TOPIC: Venus Express


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RE: Venus Express
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Venus: Earths twin planet?
ESAs Venus Express has revealed Venus as never before. For the first time, scientists are able to investigate from the top of its atmosphere, down nearly to the surface. They have shown it to be a planet of surprises that may once have been more Earth-like, and still is, to a certain extent.

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 18:40, 2007-11-28

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How has our knowledge of Venus evolved since ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has been observing Earths twin? To answer this question and to present fresh new results concerning our cryptic neighbour, the European Space Agency is inviting the media to attend a press conference to be held at ESA Headquarters in Paris on 28 November.

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Venus Express has now orbited Earths twin for 500 Earth days, completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us.

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Results from an ongoing collaboration between amateur astronomers and the European Space Agency to support the Venus Express mission will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam on Wednesday 22nd August.

"This is the first time theres been a European collaboration between amateur astronomers and scientists. In the United States, they have a long tradition and a lot of experience in this kind of work. In Europe we are just starting" - Silvia Kowollik, from the Zollern-Alb Observatory in Germany and one of the participants in the project.

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On 6 June this year, scientists all around the world will be watching with eager eyes as not one but two spacecraft observe Venus simultaneously.
 ESAs Venus Express, in orbit around Venus since 11 April 2006, will be joined for a few hours by NASAs MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging mission), flying by Venus while on its way to Mercury.
Earth-based observatories and telescopes in orbit around Earth will also be watching. Looking at Venus together, spacecraft and ground observatories will obtain a unique set of data each, so many different eyes will observe the same regions and phenomena during the same time frame.

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Data from Venus Express, which has been revealing new and crucial details about our closest planetary neighbour, will now be augmented by synoptic data from a coordinated ground-based observation campaign.
This campaign will contribute to the growing body of information on the nature of Venuss atmosphere and will help put the spacecrafts observations into a broader context.
Between 23 May and 9 June, scientists working at a dozen telescopes and observatories spread all over the world will examine Venus from the ground and perform measurements, some of which are not feasible for Venus Express.

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Report for Period 6 May to 12 May 2007

With the installation of AOCMS_SW patch 14 and the update of the on-board ephemeris, Venus Express was configured for the quadrature phase. This phase is defined as the period during which the Sun-Spacecraft-Earth angle is between 75° and 95°.

 

During the quadrature phase, revised operating constraints on the VMC lead to the necessity for changing the spacecraft attitude to prevent unacceptable illumination of the VMC. To this end, fake ephemerides on the positions of the spacecraft and the Earth are uploaded to Venus Express.

On 11 May 2007, for the first time, Earth pointing was achieved using fake ephemerides with a Sun illumination of ~10 degrees on the +Y spacecraft face. The first pass with a tilted attitude was closely monitored by the Flight Control Team (FCT). As part of quadrature operations, the delayed execution of TC files was also introduced. No anomalies related to quadrature operations were detected and the performances of the system were nominal.

Later in the quadrature phase a swap to High Gain Antenna 2 is required for Earth communications, as the spacecraft attitude for continuing the use of HGA 1 would result in illumination of spacecraft faces not designed to cope with such exposure.

As part of the investigation of the anomaly with the S-Band, a set of tests was performed on 8 May with the New Norcia ground station. The current indications suggest that the problem lies in the path between the entry to RFDU SW3 and the antenna.

The table below shows a chronology of the main activities in the reporting period:

 

MET (Day) Date DOY VPER# Main Activity
544 06/05/07 126 380 TM bitrate updated to 228 kbps before the pass
545 07/05/07 127 381 Routine Mission Operations
546 08/05/07 128 382 S-Band test
547 09/05/07 129 383 Installation of patch 14 in RAM and both EEPROM
548 10/05/07 130 384 Routine Mission Operations
549 11/05/07 131 385 Start of quadrature phase.
For the first time, fake ephemerides were used to compute guidance and commanding was uplinked via delayed TC files
550 12/05/07 132 386 Routine Mission Operations.

At the end of the last Cebreros pass in the reporting period (DOY 132, 18:00z) Venus Express was orbiting Venus at 139 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 463 seconds.

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 15:50, 2007-05-17

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An exciting new series of videos from ESAs Venus Express has been capturing atmospheric details of day and night areas simultaneously, at different altitudes.
 The south pole of the planet and its gigantic double vortex has been pictured as never before.
The south pole of Venus and the double-eyed storm permanently rule atmospheric phenomena in that area of the planet. They are key to understanding the global atmospheric dynamics on Venus and will contribute to a better comprehension of the global meteorology of the planet.
In the search for all possible clues on how to solve the global atmospheric puzzle, the team of scientists behind the Ultraviolet, Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board Venus Express, have tried something new starting from the south pole.

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