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Venus Express can start its Mission in June

* Seven instruments to explore the Morning Star

Berlin, ILA 2006, 16 May 2006

The European Venus Express space probe is ready to begin its scientific mission in June. After a journey of nearly five months and 400 million kilometres, Venus Express successfully entered orbit around Venus on 11 April. Controlled by the joint operations team of the European Space Agency and EADS Astrium at ESA’s Control ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, the 50 minute burn of the main engine slowed down the probe's speed, so that it could captured by the planet’s gravity. Only 48 hours later first scientific data and pictures were sent back to Earth. A couple of further manoeuvres set the probe in its final 24-h operational orbit. Instruments were switched on step by step, so that routine operations can start this month.

The Venus Express engine and the eight 10 Newton thrusters to position the probe, were built by EADS Space Transportation in Lampoldshausen, Germany, before being incorporated into the spacecraft propulsion system which was designed, built and tested by EADS Astrium in Stevenage, United Kingdom.

Venus Express is the first European spacecraft to visit the planet Venus. The probe was designed and built for the European Space Agency, in only 33 months, under the prime contractorship of EADS Astrium in France and launched on 9 November 2005 from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Since launch, Venus Express has functioned as planned during its journey from Earth to Venus and was operated successfully with the support of the EADS Astrium team from Toulouse in France and Stevenage in the UK.

The success of this critical manoeuvre will pave the way for the start of the Venus Express scientific mission. In the coming weeks, Venus Express will begin its one and half Earth year-long mission to investigate the Venusian atmosphere in terms of structure, composition and dynamics with its seven scientific instruments.

Venus Express will orbit the second planet of the solar system at an altitude between 250 and 66,000 kilometres by flying above its poles.

Examining the prevailing conditions in the atmosphere and environment of Venus will give crucial insights into understanding the long-term climatic evolution processes on Earth, especially the green-house effect.

By re-using designs developed and experience gained as prime contractor on both the Mars Express and Rosetta probes, EADS Astrium has ensured that Venus Express meets the triple challenge of achieving its scientific objectives, within extremely tight cost and development schedule constraints.

EADS Astrium is Europe’s leading satellite system specialist. Its activities cover complete civil and military telecommunications and Earth observation systems, science and navigation programmes, and all spacecraft avionics and equipment.
EADS Astrium is a subsidiary of EADS SPACE. In 2005 EADS SPACE had a turnover of €2.7 billion and 11,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.

EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2005, EADS generated revenues of €34.2 billion and employed a workforce of more than 113,000.

Contacts for the media
Rémi Roland
EADS SPACE (FR)
Tel.: +33 (0)1 42 24 27 34

Frédéric-Pierre Isoz
EADS SPACE (FR)
Tel.: +33 (0) 1 42 24 28 77

Jeremy Close
EADS SPACE (UK)
Tel.: +44 (0)1438 77 38 72

Mathias Pikelj
EADS SPACE (GER)
Tel.: +49 (0)7545 8 91 23