ESA - Venus Express

[flynn]

20 Day to launch bump.<br /><br /><b>Venus Express propellant loading completed</b><br /><br /><i>4 October 2005</i><br />ESA's Venus Express spacecraft is now fuelled and ready for transport to the next facility at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, dedicated to installing it onto the launcher upper-stage.<br /> <br />To be efficiently trapped by Venus’s gravity, the spacecraft has been equipped with a ‘bipropellant’ propulsion system similar to the ones used on board of modern telecommunication satellites. It mainly differs by the size and number of propellant tanks. Venus Express has two tanks of more than 260 litres capacity. <br /><br />Full story <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

<b>Venus Express ready for 'mating' with upper-stage</b><br /> <br /><i>5 October 2005</i><br />The Venus Express spacecraft is now sitting on its Launch Vehicle Adaptor (LVA), ready for the ‘mating’ with the Fregat upper-stage rocket, and only weeks away from launch on 26 October 2005.<br /> <br />Following the completion of the propellant loading, Venus Express was transferred from the Hazardous Processing Facility to the Upper Composite Integration Facility at Baikonur on 30 September. Here, the joining (or mating) of the spacecraft with the LVA, and subsequently with the Fregat upper stage and the payload fairing will take place. <br />On 1 October, the spacecraft was lifted off the base of its transport container using the facility crane, and was carefully moved over the LVA by a team of specialist mechanical operators from Alcatel Alenia Space Italia (Italy). <br /><br /><br />Full Story.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

Project Scientist: An interview with Håkan Svedhem<br /><br /> <br />Håkan Svedhem always finds space launches to be exciting moments, but when you have been involved so much in building the science payload, there is something much more special when it is 'your' spacecraft on the launchpad...<br /> <br />Full interview <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

*12 day bump* Am I boring you yet? <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br /><b>Venus Express mated with upper-stage</b><br /><br /> <br /><i>12 October 2005</i><br />Preparations for ESA's Venus Express mission passed a new milestone when the spacecraft was attached to its Fregat upper-stage rocket. The mission is now only two weeks away from launch on 26 October.<br /> <br />The composite unit of the launch vehicle adapter (LVA) and the Venus Express spacecraft, together called the 'stack', has been mechanically mated with the Fregat upper-stage rocket. <br /><br />The activity was classified as 'hazardous' since both the spacecraft and the Fregat upper-stage are already fully loaded with highly flammable and toxic propellant. Venus Express carries around 570 kilograms and Fregat about 5000 kilograms of propellant<br /><br />Full Story <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[henryhallam]

Thanks for the updates!

 

[no_way]

Its eleven days now <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />I had an idle thought about solar-powered airplane for venusian atmosphere. The airplane itself would not be too difficult to pull off, but the trickiest part would be entering the atmosphere. The craft would probably have to be packed inside a capsule which does the entry from orbit, deploys chutes to slow down and then opens and drops the aircraft.<br />Geoffrey Landis has written about it, see here:<br />http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/papers.html<br />There is a paper called "solar flight on Mars and Venus"<br /><br />Of course, packing something the size of NASA Helios into a capsule and then successfully deploying it would be a tough challenge indeed.

 

[najab]

The Venusian atmosphere is so thick that you wouldn't need an aeroplane, a balloon would work just as well.

 

[no_way]

Balloons have been done on venus before. <br />But the problem with the balloons is that they are at the mercy of winds. You cant control your movement, and this limits the usefulness of the platform quite a bit.<br />With controlled flight, you could focus on certain areas, observing longer-duration local phenomena etc. A motorized blimp might even work, but IIRC the winds on venus are quite strong so it would require much more than solar power to overcome the winds.

 

[flynn]

<b>Venus Express Flight Control Team</b><br /><br /><i>14 October 2005</i><br />Over more than a year of preparations, fourteen individual experts have come together to learn teamwork and develop trust in each other's skills and abilities.<br /> <br />They are the Flight Control Team (FCT), the people who actually fly Venus Express, working on a multi-million-Euro science mission that will travel to Earth's nearest planetary neighbour<br /><br />Full Story <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[najab]

><i>Balloons have been done on Venus before. </i><p>Yes, but not very well.</p>

 

[flynn]

8 Days till launch.<br /><br /><b>Fairing Installation</b><br /><i>17 Oct 2005 15:14</i><br /><br />Today, Monday 17 October 2005, the payload fairing has been successfully installed on the nose block (composite of Fregat Upper Stage and Venus Express spacecraft). The first part of the activity was the tilting of the nose block from vertical to horizontal position. With both the spacecraft and the Upper Stage being fully fuelled the activity is classified as hazardous, and was hence conducted with the minimum number of personnel present in the clean room. <br /><br />Full Story with lovely pics <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

*7 Day Bump*<br /><br /><b>Venus Express ready for lift-off</b><br /><br /><i>18 October 2005</i><br />ESA PR 45-2005. ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft is to be launched on a Soyuz-Fregat launcher from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday 26 October at 06:43 CEST (04:43 GMT, 10:43 local time).<br /> <br />Venus Express is Europe’s first mission to Venus, a place of many mysteries that scientists are still eager to solve. Principal among those mysteries is why a planet so similar to the Earth in size, mass, and composition has evolved so differently over the course of the last 4.6 billion years.<br /><br />Full Story with links to live coverage of launch <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

Todays bump (really should of been yesturdays) is to mark 38 years and 1 day since the Soviet Unions Venera 4 landed on Venus.<br /><br />1967: Soviets glimpse beneath clouds of Venus<br />The Soviet Union has successfully sent a space probe into the atmosphere of the planet Venus for the first time. <br />After its four-month journey from Earth, Venera 4 plunged through the planet's dense cloud cover and down towards the surface. <br /><br />Almost immediately it began sending back coded bleeps carrying details of the gases that make up the air around Venus, as well as readings for temperatures and pressure. <br /><br />It is the first time any measurements have been taken from inside the planet's atmosphere. <br /><br />The Soviet Union had hoped to attempt a "soft" landing on the surface of Venus, and Venera 4 carried equipment designed to allow communications even while submerged beneath any oceans which it was suspected there might be on the surface. <br /><br />But contact was lost 94 minutes after the probe entered the atmosphere, when it would still have been about 15 miles (25 km) above the planet itself. <br /><br />Full story from BBC <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[flynn]

And one that really is for today. (38 years ago today)<br /><br /><b>1967: US probe flies by hot and windy Venus</b><br /><br />The American spacecraft Mariner 5 has successfully flown past the planet Venus, just one day after a Soviet space probe disappeared into its atmosphere. <br />Mariner 5 passed within 2,480 miles (3,990 km) of Venus and sent back the most detailed data yet gathered about what it is like there. <br /><br />The probe was travelling at about 19,122 miles an hour (30,774 km/h) as it began the fly-by at 1734 GMT. After three minutes, communications were broken as it went behind the planet and out of the line of sight of the Earth. <br /><br />It resumed transmissions 23 minutes later. <br /><br /> Full Story <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[JonClarke]

najab wrote in reponse to "Balloons have been done on Venus before."<br /><br />"Yes, but not very well."<br /><br />What??????!!!!! The Vega 1 and 2 and two balloons were a great success. They were landmark space missions (still the only terrestrial aircraft have flown in another atmosphere), fulfilled all their mission goals, and each returned valuable data for two days.<br /><br />Jon<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[no_way]

(tonque firmly in cheek) he's probably referring to the fact that they didnt send pictures suitable for desktop wallpapers from multi-megapixel stereo cameras.

 

[kane007]

<b>Venus Express set for transport to launcher assembly building</b><br /><br />Sorry Flynn, but I think you may still be in bed, so I've done the update - Link<br /><br />Today, Wednesday 19 October 2005, at 02:45 in the morning (18 October, 20:45 UTC) the upper composite with the Venus Express spacecraft arrived in the MIK-40 launch vehicle integration building. The journey by transport train from the MIK-112 facility took five and a half hours.<br /><br /><font color="red">DO NO HARM</font><br />

 

[shoogerbrugge]

Don't they understand we want pictures.<br /><br />There are none on the Energia site, none on the Starsem site and none on the ESA site. What a bad development

 

[najab]

I was just saying that because balloons have been done before, is no reason not to try it again with 30 years more advanced technology.

 

[mikejz]

I agree. Actually the environmental conditions of a Venus balloon are almost earth like.

 

[mikejz]

I agree. Actually the environmental conditions of a Venus balloon are almost earth like.

 

[no_way]

uh .. thats the thing. Im of the opinion, that technology has advanced sufficiently enough to move past the balloons into realm of controlled flight in alien atmospheres.

 

[kane007]

Would this suffice.<br /><br />This ESA page links to above + has a countdown clock.

 

[flynn]

No worries, and your right I was sleeping like a baby. (I needed it after yesterday)<br /><br />Had an awful exam at 14:30 but not before my Girlfriend went into false labour between 8 and 12.<br /><br />6 Days left, I'm going to have to hurry the Girlfriend up so I can be off on Paternity leave otherwise I'll be working during the launch.<br /><br />Also at the exam (I was already seated so I couldn't ask) A guy walked into the same exam with a ESA MSG T-Shirt on, I was racking my brain but couldn't figure out what mission it was for (Probably wasted 5 valuable minutes on it) Anyway, the Internet being a wonderful thing I found out. Shame I didn't get chance to chat with him about it. Hopefully I'll catch up with him at a tutorial next year.<br /><br />http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMLFM2VQUD_index_0_m.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>

 

[kane007]

Well done. You got one between the goal posts.<br /><br />Were due our 2nd in a little over 3 weeks.