A European
probe bound for Venus has taken a parting glance at its home world as it heads
toward its cloudy quarry.
The
European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express probe photographed Earth and the Moon
in both visible and infrared light during a shakedown of its instrument
package, which includes the VIRTIS imaging spectrometer.
"It shows
that the instrument is really working beautifully," Kevin Baines, a NASA
participating scientist with Venus Express' VIRTIS team, told SPACE.com.
"It bodes well for the rest of the mission."
VIRTIS, an instrument
that scans objects in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared range of the
light spectrum, is designed to track Venus' thick clouds at varying altitudes,
as well as study their composition. Like many of the instruments aboard Venus
Express, VIRTIS is similar to a tool flown on a previous ESA mission - in this
case the comet-bound Rosetta
probe.
When pointed
at Earth, VIRTIS returned a familiar globe of blue and white - with day and
night sides easily discernable - in the visible range, while an infrared view
presented a thermal glimpse of a planet awash in warm reds. The observations
will serve as a benchmark for comparison once the spacecraft reaches Venus, ESA
researchers said.
"A
comparison of Venus spectra with Earth spectra with the same instrument will
also be of interest for textbook illustration of the comparison between the two
planets," said Pierre Drossart, one of two principal investigators for the
VIRTIS instrument, in a statement.
Venus
Express turned its VIRTIS eye on the Earth-Moon system from a distance of about
2.1 million miles (3.5 million kilometers).
The probe's
six other primary instruments, such as its Venus Monitoring Camera, are also
going through their own series of checks and evaluations.
"It's like
testing a new airplane or car," Baines said. "Before you go off joyriding with
it, you want to make sure everything works."
Venus
Express launched
spaceward late Nov. 8 EST from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome and is expected
to reach Venus in April 2006.
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