A probe circling
the planet Venus has slipped into its final orbit around the cloud-covered
world, though final instrument checks are still underway, the European Space
Agency (ESA) said Tuesday.
The space
agency's Venus Express spacecraft, which arrived
around its target planet last month, settled into its final, elliptical orbit Sunday,
ESA officials said. The orbital path ranges between 155 miles (250 kilometers)
and 41,010 miles (66,000 kilometers) above the cloudy world's surface and takes
24 hours for a complete circuit, they added.
"This is the orbit designed to perform the best
possible observations of Venus, given the scientific objectives of the mission,"
said Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express project scientist for the ESA, in a statement.
When Venus Express first entered orbit around its
destination world, the probe's orbit varied in altitude between 248 miles (400 kilometers) and
217,479 miles (350,000 kilometers). Despite the large distance to Venus at its
farthest point, that initial, nine-day
orbit excited researchers since it gave them their only global views of
Venus for the planned 243-Earth day mission.
Two days
after making orbital arrival, Venus Express returned
images of its target planet's south pole - the first-ever of Venus -
finding a previously suspected vortex that appears to be a counterpart to a
north pole structure.
The $226
million (220 million Euro) Venus Express mission launched
from Earth in November 2005 as the ESA's fastest-developed expedition to date. It
is the first dedicated orbiter to visit the planet since NASA's Magellan probe, which
ended its mission with a death plunge into the Venusian atmosphere in 1994.
Checks of
the Venus Express' seven
primary instruments will continue until about June 4, when the spacecraft's
science phase is slated to begin, mission managers said.
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