Will Begin Main Mission Next Month

The European Space Agency's Venus Explorer probe successfully entered orbit around the mysterious planet Tuesday, sending its first signals to controllers on Earth a short time later.

"Everything went as it was planned, clearly, without difficulties," Gaele Winters, European Space Agency (ESA) director of operations, told a news conference Tuesday. "This is a great success."

The 1.3 ton probe -- which was launched on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan last November --  travelled 250 million miles through space to Venus, where it is to undergo a mission scheduled to last 486 days.

The next step for the probe is to modify its orbit to operational standards, a process expected to take four weeks. Venus Explorer will then begin sending data back from the planet --  which, despite its mythological "planet of love" connotations, features a decidedly unromantic atmosphere of carbon monoxide and clouds of sulphuric acid, all at an average temperature of 842 degrees Fahrenheit.

Which may beg the question... why Venus?

"It all comes back to the basic question that I'm sure just about everybody has asked --- how did we turn up here out of all that?" said ESA science director David Southwood to Reuters.

The answer, Southwood says, is Venus's similarities to Earth -- especially in size, mass, and composition. Scientists expect data collected by the Venus Explorer will help them determine why a planet otherwise so similar to Earth, evolved so differently.

FMI: www.esa.int