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Mission record

Venus Express

Also known as VenusExpress, VEX

ESA · Launched

Explore trajectory

Completed · Success

A European Space Agency orbiter built on the Mars Express satellite bus to study the atmosphere and plasma environment of Venus from orbit, which ESA's mission page calls Europe's first mission to Venus. It investigated the role played by the greenhouse effect in creation of the atmosphere, the behavior and characteristics of cloud and haze formation at different altitudes, atmospheric escape and its interaction with solar winds, and the mechanism behind the super rotation in the upper atmosphere. It reached Venus on 11 April 2006 and operated in a 24 hour polar orbit until contact was lost on 28 November 2014.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Soyuz-Fregat
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), Kazakhstan
Countries
Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden
Mission types
Orbiter

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched on a Soyuz-Fregat from Baikonur Cosmodrome

    The master catalog records that Venus Express launched successfully on 9 November 2005 at 03:33 UT on a Soyuz-Fregat booster from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and that the original launch was to have taken place on 26 October 2005 but was postponed due to contamination of the launch fairing. Recorded at minute precision because the launch/orbital information page prints Launch Date/Time: 2005-11-09T03:33:00Z, a whole minute with zero seconds, and the prose beside it prints 03:33 UT. ESA's mission page prints the same day and names the vehicle a Soyuz-Fregat launcher.

    Earth

  2. Orbit insertion

    Arrival at Venus and orbit insertion

    The master catalog records that after launch the spacecraft went directly to a Venus transfer trajectory, that cruise to Venus took 153 days and covered a distance of roughly 400 million km, and that arrival at Venus and orbit insertion began on 11 April 2006 with the LSP start at 7:14:44 UT and main engine start at 7:17:14 UT, the burn ending at 8:07:28 UT after imparting a delta-V of 1246.28 m/s into an initial 400 x 350 000 km orbit with a period of about 9 days. ESA's mission page gives the same day as Venus arrival. Carried at day precision because the page describes an interval with a start and an end rather than one instant.

    Venus

  3. Milestone

    Nominal mission begins

    The master catalog records that the nominal mission started on 4 June 2006 and was originally planned to last roughly two Venus sidereal days (486 Earth days), and that it was extended. It also records that the PFS instrument was not operational since launch due to a malfunction, that a decrease in S-band signal level occurred at the end of 2006, and that the VIRTIS-M cryocooler failed in October 2008 disabling the VIRTIS-M infrared channel.

    Venus

  4. Milestone

    Routine science ends and the aerobraking campaign begins

    The master catalog records that routine science operations ended on 15 May 2014 and the spacecraft periapse was allowed to drop to 130-135 km to study atmospheric density and aerobraking effects, with the core part of the study lasting from 18 June to 11 July, after which the periapse was raised again to 460 km and the mission entered a reduced science phase. The dates of the core study are not carried as an event of their own because the sentence that prints them prints no year.

    Venus

  5. Mission end

    Contact lost after the fuel is depleted

    The master catalog records that the fuel was assumed to be depleted by late November and contact was lost with Venus Express on 28 November 2014. ESA's mission page disagrees on the month, printing Mission end: December 2014 beside 8 years of operation. The record follows the day the master catalog prints and carries the disagreement rather than resolving it.

    Venus

  6. Milestone

    Seven manoeuvres bring the orbiter into its 24 hour polar orbit

    The master catalog records that a sequence of seven maneuvers culminating on 6 May on orbit 16 brought it into an elliptical 24 hour, 250 x 66000 km polar orbit with the periapsis centered initially over 78 N latitude, and that the pericenter drifted northward at roughly 3 degrees per year, reaching the north pole in October 2009. Carried without a timestamp because the sentence that prints 6 May prints no year.

    Venus

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Venus Express · Orbiter · completed

    Destinations: Venus

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 3, 2026