 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Venus Express Spacecraft To Lift Off November 9
Moscow (AFP) Oct 31, 2005 Venus Express, the European Space Agency's first mission to explore Earth's closest neighbour, will be launched November 9, after the lift-off was postponed earlier this month, the Russian space agency said Monday. "The launch is planned for November 9 at 6:33 am Moscow time (0333 GMT) from the Russian cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan," Roskosmos agency said in a statement. Before then, "experts from the Russian space agency will fix faults which have been discovered and rerun the cycle of launch preparations," said Roskosmos. It said the new launch date was set during a meeting of a state commission grouping Russian space sector officials and the decision was taken in consultation with the European Space Agency. Venus Express, designed to monitor the planet's unusual atmosphere, was to have been launched by a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket, operated by the company Starsem, from Baikonur on October 26. But the European Space Agency (ESA) said five days earlier that "contamination" had been detected inside the fairing -- the bullet-shaped hood that covers the payload on the top of the rocket -- in final checks at Baikonur. It did not give details. The 1.27-tonne unmanned orbiter is equipped with seven instruments, is intended to map the Venus surface and weather system, looking at temperature variation, cloud formations, wind speeds and gas composition. Its main goal is to help understand why Venus fell prey to runaway global warming. Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is similar in size, mass and age to Earth, but the two planets are otherwise quite different. The so-called Evening Star has clouds of suffocating gas driven by hurricane-force winds, as well as a surface pressure and temperature high enough to crush and melt lead. Venus Express is a sister to Mars Express, an orbiter that is now circling the Red Planet. The launch postponement had been announced less than two weeks after a disastrous launch involving an ESA satellite and a Russian rocket. CryoSat, an ice-monitoring satellite costing 140 million euros (170 million dollars), was lost on October 8, after the booster stage failed following lift-off from a base at Plesetsk, northern Russia. Its carrier was a converted Soviet-era SS-19 ballistic missile, Rockot, operated by Eurockot Launch Services GmbH, a joint venture of EADS SPACE Transportation and Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Astronomy News from Skynightly.com
Venus Express Completes LEOP Activities
Paris (ESA) Nov 15, 2005The Venus Express Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) activities again continued to run very smoothly. All foreseen activities were completed and it was also possible to bring forward some platform commissioning activities, which were planned for last weekend. |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
