Venus Express Options

[cndwrld]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has two sets of web sites; one for the general public, and one that is a little more technical. On the latter, the Science and Technology pages, there is one for Venus Express (VEX). And on that page is a link to a monthly operations report (MOR). Which until recently had been last updated in the middle of 2010.

We're trying to get the status reports up to date, and then hope to keep them current with regular updates. Currently on-line as of today are reports up to September of 2011. We'll try to get them up to date before too much longer.

For anyone interested, the Venus Express page on the ESA Science and Technology pages is at:

http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress

And the most recent Venus Express status report is listed on the SciTech home page:
http://sci.esa.int

[cndwrld]

The Venus Express status reports are available through the end of 2012 at:

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...mp;fareaid_2=63

[Phil Stooke]

... and it just took a bit of a hit from the recent solar storm...

http://www.space.com/14834-solar-storm-bli...spacecraft.html



Phil

[Paolo]

esaoperations tweeted this 3 hours ago

#Venusexpress #startrackers were back functioning as of this AM at 03:25 UT

[cndwrld]

Venus Express is currently in what is called quadrature operations, where the spacecraft is tilted 10 degrees when Earth pointing in order to keep the Sun out of the Venus Monitoring Camera field of view. This puts a lot of thermal constraints on the operations. They expect to get back to normal science operations within a few days, but the quadrature thermal restrictions slow things down a bit. So far, everything looks fine with the trackers, though.

[Paolo]

ESA science tweeted this this morning

Last transit of #Venus this century 5-6 June 2012.Unique observation opportunity.Also @ESA's Venus Express is getting prepared

any more info? VEx is getting prepared for what exactly?

[Phil Stooke]

I don't know, but presumably any communication is impossible, so it may need to be protected from potential problems (certain safe modes etc.) during this period.

Phil

[cndwrld]

I don't know what they were tweeting. But the transit observations are being scheduled right now. The bus will be left largely nominal. There are no comms for three days, but the science instruments will operate during that period to capture data simultaneously with ground observations. On the back side, in eclipse, the ground track will happen to be over an area that is suspected of volcanic activity, and eclipse allows an attempt to get low-res images of the ground at about the same time as the transit.

[cndwrld]

VEX is back to nominal operations now.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEM402BYLZG_0.html

We're hard to kill.

[cndwrld]

The status report for the period 15 January to 4 February 2012 is now
at the VEX Status Archive.

[cndwrld]

The VEX Mission Operations Report number 244 is now on-line at the VEX Status Report Archive,
here.


This report covers the 76th month of operations, including the start of the special 'quadrature' operations.

[TheAnt]

Thank you cndwrld, you guys plan anything special for the transit in about a months time?

[cndwrld]

The unfortunate thing about the transit is that Venus is so close to the Sun that we will lose communications. We got permission to operate the instruments, but a difficult thermal situation and the need to store all the data in memory for three days makes it difficult to do some observations.

In the day before and after the transit, we will be taking spectroscopic cloud data of the southern latitudes, in coordination with ground observers. On the day of the transit, we'll be taking direct solar observations, as well as some atmospheric observations using the sunlight diffraction in the upper to middle atmosphere.

At the European Space Astronomy Centre, the VEX team just put on a series of talks about the Transit, and how important they were historically and also how much they are still useful. But, if one is actually in orbit around Venus, there isn't really anything different than normal.

From what I've seen, the most interesting possible use of the transit and VEX is for studies about exoplanet atmospheres. We discover exoplanets outside our solar system by noticing their transits in front of their associated stars. With enough resolution, it is possible to resolve some details of the exoplanet atmospheres. So far, only done for a very few planets which are incredibly large gas planets. And it is incredibly difficult.

Think about our solar system: if one looked at our planets from afar as exoplanets, how would we remotely tell the difference between two almost identical planets, Earth and Venus, where one is Eden and the other is Hell?

The transit of Venus allows a test case. We can resolve the Venus atmosphere from Earth at the transit ingress and egress. VEX can use the SOIR instrument to record sunlight as the spacecraft goes behind the planet, 'following' the Sun as the light goes through the atmosphere. The data taken by VEX can be used as a baseline to compare the data taken of the refracted sunlight through the atmosphere as seen by Earth ground observers. It is hoped that this will be a useful test case for developing techniques to detect exoplanet atmospheres, as well as learn how to detect basic compositions of those atmospheres. That might allow researchers to determine which exoplanets might have habitable atmospheres, and which definitely do not.

Will it work? Who knows. It's Science!!

[TheAnt]

The unfortunate thing about the transit is that Venus is so close to the Sun that we will lose communications.

Thank you for your long reply.
And yes I did in fact expect that you would loose communications with Venus express during the actual transit.
So perhaps I should have phrased my question as if you had anything else planned, public outreach program or whatever.

But yes, it is a good idea to use the transit as a testbed for exo-planet studies.
Not that I actually think we will find a second Earth any time soon, but such studies will be make it possible to find the promising planets for in-depth studies when the technology (and funding) might be available.

[cndwrld]

So perhaps I should have phrased my question as if you had anything else planned, public outreach program or whatever.

For public outreach, the Venus Express Science Operations Centre is sending two people to Svalbard Island, above the Arctic Circle, with a solar telescope. Where we're located, near Madrid, there's no visibility. And there's limited visibility in Europe (for the most part). But above the Arctic Circle, the Sun doesn't set, so the transit will be visible. We have the 9" solar telescope, plus a normal telescope, and the mount. The team is finalizing testing now. And if the weather cooperates, we'll show the transit on the Web, live from Svalbard.

There is also a second team, with identical telescopes, who are going to Australia. They'll be watching the transit from the NASA Deep Space Network station near Canberra, and also broadcasting live on the Web.

For people in Europe, the EuroNews network has taped interviews at ESAC for the transit. They are putting together one of their nice 30 minute science shows about the transit, which will be out (I'm guessing) right before the transit.

That's all I know about right now.