En route for Venus - via Kazakhstan

Testing Venus Express in January 2005

Following the Flight Acceptance Review green light from ESA, Venus Express is starting out on the first stage of its voyage to the Earth's intriguing nearest neighbour planet. On Saturday 6 August the EADS Astrium-primed spacecraft, Europe's first mission to Venus, will be making the comparatively short terrestrial hop on an Antonov cargo transporter plane from Toulouse to the launch site at Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Once at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the interplanetary craft will be put through its final test campaign, notably to check the electronics and propulsion systems, before the scheduled launch date of 26 October.

Taking less than three years from initial programme approval to launch, Venus Express has certainly lived up to its name! It has been a model of European co-operation - a team of 25 industrial partners, under EADS Astrium's prime contractorship, worked on the spacecraft and its seven instruments - and ingenuity, with innovative, cost-efficient use of expertise and technology inherited from the Mars Express and Rosetta missions.

After the launch on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket, Venus Express will travel through space for 153 days. On arrival around Venus, it will manoeuvre into its operational orbit over a period of five days, and the investigative mission will last for two Venusian years (around 500 Earth days).