DARMSTADT, Germany – A European spacecraft moved into orbit around Venus on Tuesday, successfully completing a critical stage of a mission to explore the hostile climate and atmosphere of Earth’s nearest neighbor.
Officials at the European Space Agency’s control center in Darmstadt cheered, clapped and embraced as a green line indicating a clear signal from the Venus Express appeared on their screens, a sign that it had completed the maneuver to enter orbit.
“It’s a fantastic mission for us. We’ve finally reached Venus,” project manager Don McCoy said.
A short time later, scientists received the first data from the probe and praised the technical phase of the Venus mission – the agency’s fourth to a celestial body – as a success.
Over the next several weeks, scientists will turn on the seven instruments on the probe and run them through tests. By June, they are expected to begin gathering information on how Venus, which is similar to Earth in size and geological makeup, wound up with a hot, dense atmosphere swathed in clouds of sulfuric acid.
“We want to learn about the mistakes of Venus for the sake of the Earth,” scientific director David Southwood said.
An initial image of Venus’ south pole is expected on Thursday.
To start Tuesday’s maneuver, controllers fired the probe’s rocket engine to slow it down so Venus’ gravity could pull it into orbit. It then disappeared behind Venus for 10 minutes, leaving controllers without contact as it swung around the back of the planet. It re-emerged on schedule.
Venus Express was launched Nov. 9 atop a Russian booster rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The seven instruments aboard the $260 million craft include spectrometers to measure temperature and analyze the atmosphere and a special camera to concentrate on activity among Venus’ many volcanoes.
Scientists hope the data they collect will answer questions about why Venus developed an atmosphere almost 90 times denser than Earth’s. Of key importance will be studying Venus’ strong greenhouse effect – the way carbon dioxide traps the sun’s heat – and the permanent hurricane-force winds that constantly circle it high in the atmosphere.
Venus and Earth two share similar mass and density, and both have inner cores of molten rock believed to have been formed at about the same time. But Venus’ atmosphere is made up almost entirely of carbon dioxide and has very little water vapor.
Thanks to runaway warming from its greenhouse effect, Venus has the hottest surface of all the planets – around 864 degrees. The satellite’s aluminum-frame probe is coated with a metallic polymer skin to protect it from the heat.
“Venus is quite close to Earth, yet so radically different,” McCoy said. “Why is that?”
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