After a journey of nearly five months and 400 million kilometres, the Venus Express probe is on target for successful in-orbit insertion around Venus on 11 April controlled by the joint operations team of the European Space Agency and EADS Astrium.at ESA's Control ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany.
This crucial manoeuvre (called Venus Orbit Insertion - VOI) requires a 50 minute burn of its 400 Newton main engine to slow the probe sufficiently for it to be captured by Venus's gravity and begin its first orbit around the "Morning Star".
The Venus Express engine and the eight 10 Newton thrusters to position the probe, were built by EADS Space Transportation in Lampoldhausen, Germany, before being incorporated into the spacecraft propulsion system which was designed, built and tested by EADS Astrium in Stevenage, United Kingdom.
Venus Express is the first European spacecraft to visit the planet Venus. The probe was designed and built for the European Space Agency, in only 33 months, under the prime contractorship of EADS Astrium in France and launched on 9 November 2005 from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Since launch, Venus Express has functioned as planned during its journey from Earth to Venus and was operated successfully with the support of the EADS Astrium team from Toulouse in France and Stevenage in the UK.
The success of this critical manoeuvre will pave the way for the start of the Venus Express scientific mission. In the coming weeks, Venus Express will begin its one and half Earth year-long mission to investigate the Venusian atmosphere in terms of structure, composition and dynamics with its seven scientific instruments.
Venus Express will orbit the second planet of the solar system at an altitude between 250 and 66,000 kilometres by flying above its poles.
Examining the prevailing conditions in the atmosphere and environment of Venus will give crucial insights into understanding the long-term climatic evolution processes on Earth, especially the green-house effect.
By re-using designs developed and experience gained as prime contractor on both the Mars Express and Rosetta probes, EADS Astrium has ensured that Venus Express meets the triple challenge of achieving its scientific objectives, within extremely tight cost and development schedule constraints.
EADS Astrium is Europe's leading satellite system specialist. Its activities cover complete civil and military telecommunications and Earth observation systems, science and navigation programmes, and all spacecraft avionics and equipment.
EADS Astrium is a subsidiary of EADS SPACE. In 2005 EADS SPACE had a turnover of €2.7 billion and 11,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.
EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2005, EADS generated revenues of €34.2 billion and employed a workforce of more than 113,000.
