Venus Express Options

[Paolo]

Curious cold layer in the atmosphere of Venus even possible CO2 ice.

full paper available here http://venus.aeronomie.be/multimedia/pdf/M...CO2_jgr2012.pdf

[cndwrld]

The latest Venus Express operations report, #247, has been put on-line. It covers May of 2012, and discusses:

* two orbit correction manoeuvres,
* the end of the eighth Atmospheric Drag Experiment (ADE) campaign, and
* the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season.

We've added a couple separate sections to discuss changes over time in the Local Time at Ascending Node (LTAN) and the pericenter altitude.

The link to the page is here.

[cndwrld]

Another Venus Express operations status report has just gone up.

We plan four months in advance, and we wait to write the status reports until all the data and operations status are known, which to be truly complete is a couple months after the operations. The current report is #248, which covers our Medium Term Plan 80, or our 80th month of operations. This MTP covered 27 May to 23 June 2012.

This reporting period covered the transit of Venus during inferior conjunction, the continuation of the mission's longest Earth occultation season, and the start of the twenty-first eclipse season.

The report can be found in the VEX status report archive.

[cndwrld]

The latest Venus Express on-line status report is now available. The most recent report covers our operations in June and July of this 2012.

All of these reports can be found on the Venus Express section of the ESA Science and Technology pages. The VEX page is located at:

http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress

On that page, there is a section labeled with a link called "Latest Status Reports."

We hope that people will find these of interest.

[cndwrld]

There's a new press release from Venus Express about volcanism on Venus.

A new episode of active volcanism on Venus?

02 Dec 2012
For decades, planetary scientists have debated whether Venus possesses active volcanoes. The latest twist to the tale is provided by data sent back from ESA's Venus Express orbiter, revealing unexplained major changes in the amount of sulphur dioxide gas above the planet's dense cloud layer.

You can read the article here.

[Fran Ontanaya]

Glad to see this last update made it to the news in one of the main newspapers in Spain.

[JRehling]

This is quite the week for reporting the detection of a substance on one of the inner planets. That's three for three!

This one might be the most meaningful. Venusian volcanism is an interesting foil to terrestrial thermal evolution.

To explore this quantitatively, I get that the mass of SO2 detected above 70km corresponds to about 1/3 of the SO2 released by the Mt. Pinatubo explosion on Earth (overall, with no altitude qualification) in 1991. That leaves unanswered how much SO2 might have behaved below 70 km, or whether or not there's a compelling reason to compare the volume (or composition) of venusian vs. terrestrial outgassing events, but at least it's interesting to see such a close correspondence in volume.

[cndwrld]

ESA Web Page Redesign Launchec

The web pages for the general public of the European Space Agency have been redesigned. The new Venus Express page can be seen at the usual location here.

The Science and Technology pages haven't been updated yet. The SciTech pages here will be updated in the future. The SciTech page links to the VEX status reports remains unchanged for now.

[cndwrld]

We've added a couple more status reports for Venus Express, covering July through September 2012.

You can find them by clicking on the links in the Latest Status Report box at
http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.

Operationally, it was a pretty complicated summer.

[cndwrld]

In some of the terminator orbits of Venus Express, sequences of images were taken. One of those, from some time ago, have been made into a 12 second movie, showing the view from the spacecraft as it does one orbit around Venus. You can see it at www.esa.int/science where it is featured for now, and directly at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Sc...f_Venus_Express.

[stevesliva]

Nice! Lot of potential in those frames.

[cndwrld]

The latest Venus Express status report is on-line, with the results for mid-September to mid-October 2012. This is report 252, for our 84th monthly planning cycle (MTP084).
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link.

[cndwrld]

29 January 2013

ESA’s Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, discovering that the planet’s ionosphere balloons out like a comet’s tail on its nightside. The results are discussed on the ESA web page here .

[cndwrld]

The latest Venus Express status report is on-line, with the results for mid-October to mid-November 2012. This is report 253, for our 85th monthly planning cycle (MTP085).
The Science and Technology page for Venus Express is here, and then you click on the Latest Status Report link and choose report 253.

[cndwrld]

Latest Venus Express status report on-line for January 2013, at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=51597. It is, of course, written in the required humorless way. But I try to explain things so that people new to this stuff can understand it. If you find mistakes or things that aren't clear, please let me know.

And for your information, the ESA Science & Technology web pages (including for Venus Express) have been upgraded to a new format. It looks a lot better. The link to the Venus Express SciTech page is http://sci.esa.int/venusexpress.