A European
probe is bound for the planet Venus on a mission to peel back the shroud of the
planet's thick atmosphere after successfully launching into space atop a Russian rocket.
The European
Space Agency's (ESA) Venus
Express spacecraft rode a Russian-built Soyuz rocket into space at about
10:33 p.m. Nov. 8 EST (0333 Nov. 9 GMT), lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan on a 162-day trip to the second planet from the Sun.
By 12:13
a.m. EST Wednesday, ESA officials said Venus Express had successfully fired the
engine of its Fregat upper stage for a final time, sending the probe on a
Venus-bound course. The probe later unfurled its solar arrays, ESA officials
said.
"I have
great expectations for this mission," Venus Express project scientist Håkan Svedhem told SPACE.com
in an e-mail interview before launch. "I am sure we will get very exciting data
and perhaps a few surprises."
The $260
million (220 million Euro) Venus Express probe is the ESA's fastest spacecraft
to develop to date, taking less than four years to move from the concept phase
to launch, and its first aimed at Venus. While several probes have swung past the
planet on their way to other bodies in the Solar System, the ESA's Venus
Express is the first dedicated probe to investigate the cloudy world since NASA's
Magellan orbiter
burned up in the planet's atmosphere in 1994.
"The atmosphere
of Venus is so alien compared to Earth, yet it's our sister planet," Kevin
Baines, a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) participating
in the ESA mission, told SPACE.com before launch. "We've got the same
size, the same materials basically and almost the same gravity."
But
somewhere along the line, Earth's neighbor clouded over with a thick atmosphere
rich in carbon dioxide, and a surface temperature of averaging about 869
degrees Fahrenheit (465 degree Celsius). Researchers believe the planet may be
example of the greenhouse effect run amok, in which the world's atmosphere
traps in heat.
"Venus has
a lot of lessons to teach the Earth about how things could go awry," said Baines,
who is participating on work with two Venus Express' instruments.
The 2,733-pound
(1240-kilogram) probe carries seven high fidelity instruments - many of which
leftover or derived from previous tools aboard ESA's Mars
Express and Rosetta
probes - to make a detailed study of the planet's atmosphere.
While Venus Express' primary goal is to peer close at the Venusian
atmosphere, Svedhem and other mission team members are hopeful the spacecraft's
instruments may find hints of active volcanoes and other features on the
planet's surface.
"We shall
get detailed images of the dynamic behavior of the atmosphere in three
dimensions and spectra telling us the about the various substances in the
atmosphere," Svedhem said. "There are so many things that we want to study on
Venus and the spacecraft and the instruments are all in excellent condition."
Tuesday's
late-night launch - though it was early morning on Nov. 9 at the mission's
Kazakh launch site - marked the second attempt to launch Venus Express.
Launch
officials missed
an initial Oct. 26 launch date after engineers discovered traces of insulation
contamination inside the probe's protective launch fairing. The contamination
forced pad workers to remove Venus Express from its Soyuz-Fregat booster to
allow cleaning.
"This Soyuz
rocket has proven to be very reliable and it has a very good record," Svedhem
added.
ESA
officials expect Venus Express to enter orbit around its target planet on April
11 of next year. After a series of passes to adjust its orbit, the probe should
reach its final flight configuration by about May 7, they added.
Venus
Express is slated to spend at least 15 months studying the Venusian atmosphere -
which spans about two full days on Venus due to its slow spin rate - though that
term could be extended in the future, ESA officials said.
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