Venus Express: One Year in Orbit, Symposium at the 2007 EGU General Assembly Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Forwarding an email that was sent out today by Dmitri Titov, Venus Express PI. Cross reference with this UMSF thread.

Dear Colleagues,

the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union (EGU) will be held on April 15-20, 2007 in Vienna, Austria. The Symposium PS 2.1 "Venus Express: one year in orbit", included in the science Programme, will be focused on presentation and discussion of the results obtained during the first year of the orbital mission. Please find the description of the Symposium at the end of the e-mail and visit the EGU Web site: http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2007/ for more details about the Assembly.

We would like to encourage you to take part in the Symposium and to submit contributed abstracts. Please note that the deadline for abstracts submission is January 15, 2007.

Best regards

Dima Titov and Hakan Svedhem,
The Conveners
_________________________________________________
On April 11, 2006 Venus Express-the first European satellite at Venus- was inserted in orbit around the planet and began collecting data. The results of the first year of observations will be presented at the Symposium. The Programme will consist of solicited talks focused on the Venus Express observations and contributed presentations of the preliminary data analysis. The contributions related to the physics of Venus atmosphere, its plasma environment and the surface and based on the analysis of the data from Venus Express and earlier missions, theoretical studies and numerical modelling are highly welcome. Perspectives of the future Venus exploration will be discussed.

Convener : D. Titov (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) Co-convener : H. Svedhem (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)

[Phil Stooke]

"VE is a failed mission."

On the contrary, it's just a nuisance to us space fans.

I'm personally not interested in atmospheric dynamics or composition, but I know it's important, and waiting won't hurt it. The surface temperature mapping will be interesting for filling a few blanks in topo maps at low resolution, and might hit the jackpot with dtection of volcanism. It doesn't matter if we wait a year or more for the data, it matters that it's being collected.

I hope the people who are involved with Venus Express (and ESA in general) will release more images more quickly in future, but to call Venus Express a failed mission is unworthy of UMSF.

Phil

[helvick]

True it is only a PR failure and apart from the PFS deployment problem it is very much a success for which I am very glad.

However I do not think that some persistent nagging about the paucity of their publich outreach is out of place and it is surely very much appropriate to point out here that ESA continues to miss significant marketing opportunities by failing to engage the public in its missions.