Wed, Apr 12, 2006
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.
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