Venus Express Contract for Astrium
ASTRIUM has signed today a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) worth 82.4 million Euros for the design and development of Venus Express, the first European spacecraft to visit the planet Venus.
Amsterdam, 28 January 2003
Venus Express is scheduled for launch from the Baïkonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November 2005. It will be launched by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket and put immediately into its transfer orbit to Venus. After a journey of about 5 months, the actual mission around Venus will last nearly two Venusian years (about 500 Earth days).
Analysing the prevailing conditions in the atmosphere and in the near environment of Venus is of crucial importance for the understanding of long-term climatic evolution processes on Earth.
Venus Express is scheduled for launch from the Baïkonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November 2005. It will be launched by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket and put immediately into its transfer orbit to Venus. After a journey of about 5 months, the actual mission around Venus will last nearly two Venusian years (about 500 Earth days).
By re-using both the Mars Express spacecraft design and those spare instruments available from the earlier Mars Express and Rosetta programmes, Venus Express meets the triple challenge of its scientific objectives, its cost efficiency and its unrivalled development schedule.
Venus Express will carry out a global investigation of the Venusian atmosphere in terms of structure, composition and dynamics up to an altitude of 250 km. For that, it will carry seven scientific instruments: spectrometers, spectro-imagers and imagers covering a wavelength range from UV to thermal IR, along with a full plasma analyser.
Astrium France is the prime contractor for the spacecraft, Astrium UK is responsible for the mechanical and propulsion systems and Astrium GmbH supplies the solar arrays, the mass memory and high power supply system for transmissions (TWTA).
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