Venus Express Options

[tedstryk]

If all goes well, Venus Express will be a major topic for discussion in this forum a year from now. Does anyone know how good the surface coverage will be from VIRTIS and VMC? My understanding is that VIRTIS will obtain low resolution multispectral maps, and that VMC will, in addition to cloud monitoring, have one channel that can see the surface, but I don't know at what resolution or at what quality. It will be nice to have some non-radar images of Venus' surface besides the Venera snapshots and the shadowy images from Earth and Galileo's NIMS.

Ted

[tedstryk]

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/im...ine_full_sm.jpg

You gotta love the ESA press people.

"Venus Express will be making the first global examination of the atmosphere of Venus."

Pioneer Venus Orbiter? And to some degree the Venera orbiters?



"The scientific teams of the seven very precise instruments and multi-wavelength cameras on board expect to collect infinitely more science data than all previous missions combined - with the exception of Magellan – more than 500 megabits of data received every day."

Yes, it is a lot more than missions besides Magellan, but infinite? I think there is a bit of grandstanding here.

[4th rock from th...]

...

Pioneer Venus Orbiter?  And to some degree the Venera orbiters?

...

Yes, it is a lot more than missions besides Magellan, but infinite?  I think there is a bit of grandstanding here. 

If the PVO data where avaliable on the net this type of statement wouldn't be possible. Someone would gather that data and make some time lapse movies, global maps, etc, etc.

The best I could find is this: http://www.cg.its.tudelft.nl/~freek/venus/...ults/04-07.htmlhttp://www.cg.its.tudelft.nl/~freek/venus/report/last_results/04-07.html
Not much really.

So no wonder that ESA is selling their "product" as best as they can!