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Venus Express
Vultur
post Apr 12 2014, 03:54 AM
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QUOTE (cndwrld @ Apr 11 2014, 09:24 AM) *
And VEX has been in orbit now for 8 years


Impressive!

QUOTE
Since no other missions to Venus are being planned by any agency,


That's kind of sad IMO. Mars gets all the love wink.gif
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cndwrld
post May 19 2014, 10:02 AM
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Venus Express will be starting aerobraking soon. Our first pericentre pass using the aerobraking mode is on Tuesday, 20 May. More details in the ESA announcement here.


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cndwrld
post Jun 3 2014, 02:18 PM
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Updates about the Venus Express aerobraking will be placed on the ESA Rocket Science blog at:

http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/



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cndwrld
post Jul 10 2014, 10:58 AM
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There will be a Google Hangout today (Thursday, 10 July 2014) to talk about aerobraking with Venus Express. Information can be found, along with information on the aerobraking, at the ESA Rocket Science Blog at http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/.

As of 09 July, we're at 130 kilometers. Before the aerobraking, we had never been lower than 165 Km. Aerobraking will end in a few days.


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cndwrld
post Jul 15 2014, 01:30 PM
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Venus Express has finished its amazing aerobraking campaign. The spacecraft got down to 129.1 Km at pericentre. During the normal mission, the pericentre was maintained between 250 to 450 Km. The lowest it ever got during the atmospheric drag experiments earlier in the mission was 165.5 Km. In those extra few kilometers, the spacecraft was experiencing a lot of pressure on the panels and structure. The final orbital period is not precisely known yet, but the orbit has certainly changed a lot.

The magnetometer and plasma/neutral particle detector were on during the aerobraking pericentre passes. And the spacecraft itself was an instrument in the aerobraking, as the data from the spacecraft dynamics and the heating will be analyzed for information on the upper atmosphere.

The spacecraft is now performing one apocentre motor firing each orbit, and has completed three of them so far. These will continue until the final pericentre altitude of 460 Km is reached on 25 July 2014, or the fuel runs out, whichever comes first. If the fuel runs out before we get to 460, the science will continue until we die in a fire. If we get all the burns, we may be able to operate as long as the end of 2014. But fuel is needed for momentum dumping on a regular basis. The end of mission all depends now on how much fuel is in the tanks, which is uncertain.

Not bad for a spacecraft which wasn't designed for this.

The updates are put on the ESA Rocket Science blog.


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belleraphon1
post Nov 6 2014, 03:49 PM
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Is Venus Express still in operation? Having a hard time finding an update on the ESA sites.
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djellison
post Nov 6 2014, 04:02 PM
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I see a couple of entries ( 4 in total ) in the long range DSN schedule for the first two weeks in January 2015 ( DOY 6, 11, 12 and 13 ) for VEX - but the DSN schedule isn't particularly reliable that far out.
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Gerald
post Nov 6 2014, 04:30 PM
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As of 28 July 2014, Up above the clouds so high:
QUOTE
At the end of the campaign, 15 thruster burns raised the craft’s altitude, preventing it from dropping into the atmosphere. The last was executed on Thursday evening, boosting Venus Express to a new altitude of 460 km at its closest and 63 000 km at its furthest. This new orbit takes 22 hours 24 minutes to complete.
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belleraphon1
post Nov 6 2014, 06:43 PM
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I know they were running low on fuel .. so it has been about three months since that update. Guess no news is good news.
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cndwrld
post Nov 7 2014, 09:10 AM
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QUOTE (belleraphon1 @ Nov 6 2014, 08:43 PM) *
I know they were running low on fuel .. so it has been about three months since that update. Guess no news is good news.

We're like the guy in the Monty Python movie; we're not dead yet.

The post-aerobraking status is that everything is exactly the same as at the start of aerobraking. Astrium built VEX very well. The post-aerobraking series of pericentre raising maneuvers were fine, and we got bumped up out of the atmosphere. We've been operating nominally ever since.

We are within the error bands of our bookkeeping fuel measurements. That means that we could run out of fuel at any time; we just don't know. Every day we do minor momentum dumps, but the most likely time it will happen is during an orbital correction maneuver (OCM) used to do the regular pericentre raising required at Venus. Our next set of OCM burns is beginning 23 November and is repeated for about 10 orbits. If we survive past that set of burns, the next set is in February. If we survive past that, the next set of burns is in June. And so on.

Scientifically, we're using our remaining time on two main issues, both related to volcanism: looking for surface volcanic activity with the infrared channel of our low resolution camera; and looking at atmospheric SO2 levels. The SO2 levels in the atmosphere have seen dramatic changes between the previous missions and VEX; and the levels are dropping over the lifetime of our mission. So it may be an indication of volcanic activity replenishing SO2 levels, which then drop. There are other activities, as well.

I tried to upload our long term planning poster for the year, but it is too large. Since there probably will not be another mission to Venus for 10 or 20 years, we're trying to get all the information that we can squeeze out of the mission. The ESA Communications office is overwhelmed with work on Rosetta at the moment, so there isn't much being done for other missions.

Happy to hear someone was interested in us.


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belleraphon1
post Nov 7 2014, 02:57 PM
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Thanks for update cndwrld!

Would love to see continued Venus exploration.
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machi
post Nov 7 2014, 04:33 PM
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Good to hear that VEX is working well. Venus as our close neighbor, and in many ways planet similar to Earth, deserve at least one spacecraft at any time.
Hopefully Akatsuki orbit insertion will be OK and our presence around this planet will be continuing.


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elakdawalla
post Nov 7 2014, 07:33 PM
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Don, if you can provide me the poster in an email or dropbox link, I can host it and post a link here.


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stevesliva
post Nov 7 2014, 09:00 PM
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QUOTE (cndwrld @ Nov 7 2014, 05:10 AM) *
The ESA Communications office is overwhelmed with work on Rosetta at the moment
...
Happy to hear someone was interested in us.


Hey now, I like Game of Thrones and all, but the nitty-gritty details are more interesting in the long run. wink.gif Thanks for the update.
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elakdawalla
post Nov 11 2014, 09:30 AM
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QUOTE (cndwrld @ Nov 7 2014, 01:10 AM) *
I tried to upload our long term planning poster for the year, but it is too large. Since there probably will not be another mission to Venus for 10 or 20 years, we're trying to get all the information that we can squeeze out of the mission. The ESA Communications office is overwhelmed with work on Rosetta at the moment, so there isn't much being done for other missions.

Here's the poster!


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