Express Success

11Apr06

Venus Express in orbit
Image Credit: ESA

After an interplanetary trip of 153 days and logging 250 million miles along the way, ESA’s Venus Express has completed its orbital insertion as planned. ESA reports that the VOI was a complete success, the orbiter is in good health, and it’s been confirmed that the spacecraft is sending telemetry back to Earth. Great news!

“To better understand our own planet, we need to explore other worlds in particular those with an atmosphere,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General. “We’ve been on Titan and we already are around Mars. By observing Venus and its complex atmospheric system, we will be able to better understand the mechanisms that steers the evolution of a large planetary atmosphere and the change of climates. In the end, it will help us to get better models of what is actually going on in our own atmosphere, for the benefit of all Earth citizens.”

Another job well done. Now we await the first data and imagery.

More on Space.com: Second from the Sun

Spaceflight Now: A Venusian arrival

Planetary Weblog: Press conference notes

Planetary Society: Express to Venus

(12 Apr.) Planetary Weblog: Last thoughts on Venus Express’ orbit insertion

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10 Responses to “Express Success”  

  1. 1 Wolverine

    ESA has uploaded a high-quality replay of the post-VOI press conference from earlier today. Those on dial-up be warned, though — it’s about 68 megabytes. Running time: 31:06.

  2. 2 Solar Fizzed Out

    Thanks for the heads up about…this is cool…live preview! This makes up for the fact that I was going to say something about the title not being centered. What does everyone have against centering? Balance is good. That picture in the title area reminds me of that Pinwheel photo.

    This is so neat, especially against a black background. What will I use as an excuse for my typos now?

    Anyway, thanks for the heads up about the MBs; I’ll try to watch it before I go home as it pops up right away here. BTW, I’m trying to catch up on some sleep: yesterday I could barely keep my eyes open in front of people. I got that S&T “Beautiful Universe” edition, took it to the couch last night, and never saw a page. My cat wanted some attention and all I remember is him nibbling on me and I was out (I might have pushed him off). Woke up at 3:00 a.m., but did get at least seven hours, which is NOVEL! So…not posting too much except for brief comments about photos and such. I’ve got alot (other people’s problems on my mind and need to do some writing also.

    Oh, did you see the prominences on Spaceweather.com? Pretty amusing. I’m supposed to get my scope tomorrow. (Let’s see if it’s on time and in one piece.) I guess I will be able to see dinosaurs and gazelles, too. ;-) very extensive, and she’s a pragmatic thinker. It should be interesting–it’s in the theater downtown.

    The tag buttons are pretty nifty, and you can see it in the preview. Dictionary works fast also. Good job, Wolve, I guess you’re “cosmically powered” after all (at least that’s what it says on the bottom of the page). ;-)

    P.S. What’s the latest deal with colors here? ~o~

  3. 3 Solar Fizzed Out

    OK, it wiped out my sentence before very extensive, and she’s a pragmatic thinker. It should be interesting–it’s in the theater downtown.

    I was talking about seeing Molly Ivins Thursday as a part of that three-part series that began with The-Pulitzer-Prize-Winner-Who-Doesn’t-Say-Thank You-Even-Though-He-Speaks-Ten-Languages, and Seymour Hersch. I said she’s not an accomplished writer, but her knowledge of Texas politics is very extensive, and she’s a pragmatic thinker. It should be interesting–she’ll be at the theater downtown. (You know Molly Ivins?)

    I don’t know why this was wiped out.

  4. 4 Solar Fizzed Out

    Don’t know why this happened, too:

    Hmm,

    The Pulitzer-Prize-Winner-Who-Doesn’t-Say-Thank-You-Even-Though-He-Speaks-
    Ten-Languages.

    [Wolv’s edit: I tried peeking in the HTML to see if something went awry, but alas no. Just use fewer hyphens. :P ]

  5. 5 Wolverine

    On centering: my title has been centered since I first created the old blog back in December. I decided to make a change and dispense with the dull header graphic I’d been using (and learn my way around the nuts and bolts of WordPress a bit more). You might see the header change periodically until I settle on placement and typestyle… for the time being I rather like having the title off to the side so it doesn’t tread upon the stellar goodies in the photo.

    Re: Spaceweather… heh, I saw the captions and giggled a bit. Prominence pareidolia? Egad… last place I’d have expected to see it. And speaking of things solar, happy scope tomorrow! I’m looking forward to hearing your first PST impressions.

    Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you like the live preview feature… had I realized such a plugin existed I would have grabbed it sooner. The tag buttons might help out a bit for folks used to BBcode (or nothing at all), so I added those as well. Colors? Hmm, I’m liking the monochrome effect… or, more accurately, I have no idea how to code tags for colors. :D

    Hmm, perhaps so many hyphens weird out the comment form? I’m at a loss to understand why it exceeds the margin… that shouldn’t be. Maybe the php files were written by a Republican and the mere mention of Molly Ivins short-circuited something. :-) (And yes, I’m familiar with her, not a big fan, but she’s quite witty.)

  6. 6 Solar Flare

    Hi Wolverine, you know I wrote a post last night here, and made some comments about your header-title, and also linked a picture of a wolverine. I was saying that the font reminded me of a children’s book, and so I made up a title having to do with a wolverine. But when I clicked on the link in the “live preview” to test it, then hit my back button, it wiped everything out. I almost retyped it, but I was so tired. Now I really wish I had done so. It would have been very, very apropos.

    for the time being I rather like having the title off to the side so it doesn’t tread upon the stellar goodies in the photo.

    I knew you would say that. :-) It’s the only good answer.

    Re: Spaceweather… heh, I saw the captions and giggled a bit. Prominence pareidolia? Egad… last place I’d have expected to see it. And speaking of things solar, happy scope tomorrow! I’m looking forward to hearing your first PST impressions.

    Yes, they’re pretty amusing. I posted several of them in my Photo Center, because, like the smilie faces, Mars faces, etc. it’s so goofy. There’s nothing wrong with people seeing shapes of things–that’s human nature, it’s just when people, as you say, Hoaxland, create meaning out of them. The Sun is just a sun….and one day it will become a red giant and eveything here will end. So be it. By then I assume we will have advanced enough to go elsewhere, or at least some of us. The “Left Behind” people are actually going to be left behind, imho.

    I didn’t go to work today, and the PST is supposed to arrive (3 business days), but noone has called me about it, though it’s not as if I will run over there anyway. I’ll let you know how I make out with it. I can’t get a campsite at the Observatory until May 20th! (not that this has to do with the PST); but especially next weekend because of Easter, all the Mexican/Hispanic people use all the picnic areas, and with their pinatas and noise the deer et al are scared away. Lots of trash to pick up too. So, every Saturday is booked until May 20th, though I can still pull an all-nighter, I suppose. Girl scouts, boy scouts, etc. fill up the area quickly, but I’m glad for that. I miss going there as frequently as I used to.

    As far as the colors, I meant using color in text, as we spoke of in THE SUN IS HOT example. I’m just wondering now that you’ve changed things what the right code is. THE SUN IS RED probably won’t work. But it now looks like it did! Yay! Good, I’ve always thought you’d come through, especially since you took that picture of the moon at the exact time I was looking at it through my tent last year–fortuitious I suppose. You do seem to do the right thing, if I may be frank, at the right time, though I won’t point out all the examples. (And wolverines are supposed to be such vicious animals!)
    ;-)

    I’ve read enough about space and physics today; it’s quiet here and I’m listening to Keith Jarret’s “Koln Concert” which I happened upon at the right time years ago, and because of an astute record shop person who figured out what I wanted. It’s a favorite. It’s also the perfect anecdote to NOISE, especially noise that makes little logical sense. Please tell me that people who I respect are not so dumb or wrong.
    :-(

    Too, it appears my brother-in-law is going full-throttle with the divorce: this is sad. It appears that many people are having troubles this week. (And NO! it’s not because Mercury is (not) in retrograde!!! Lol.

    It’s just Spring. In the final analysis nothing less and nothing more. Photosynthesis–we all learned in fourth grade, or before, and something else, Ingmar Bergman’s version, which is prettier than his predecessor:

    Anything can occur, anything is possible and likely, duration and space do not exist. On the tenuous ground of reality, imagination spins out and weaves new patterns…

    The root of the word intuition, its etymology, is “observation,” and further, making connections without direct evidence. But you already knew that. :-)

    And somewhere there’s a turtle reaching four decades–really–I used to babysit a turtle. Did you hear about the–what was it–265 year old turtle that finally died in India? We should be lucky if we lived that long. Sure would answer alot of questions.

    I won’t bother apologizing for the babble–it would be disingenous. I was born talking. Too bad…oh never mind. Take care of yourself.

    :-)

  7. 7 Solar Flare

    S/b “predecessor’s”…oh, I’ll find more. ;-)

  8. 8 Solar Flare

    Oops, I almost forgot–it takes me exactly three months to lose 30 lbs if I get away from the PC. This makes flying very easy. Ask Argos about Brazilian airlines–he knows how to make things fly. Listen to the Portuguese…the language of the ether.

    :-)

  9. 9 Wolverine

    Aw rats, sorry your post got yanked. Thanks for sharing though, I can certainly appreciate the visual as well as the sentiment.

    The only quick fix I could recommend for easy color access in comments would be the BB/XHTML extension for Firefox (nyah nyah — there, my vicious streak for the day :-) ). I’ll do some looking to see if someone’s devised a plug-in which can accomodate, but I’m not too optimistic… it’s a bit of a tall order.

    Thanks for the kind words in there; I confess I’m now rather curious to know what else I’ve done.

    I’ll post more later, sorry for being brief… I’m pooped and a bit grumpy at the moment. My beloved TV died today and I’m contemplating what I should do about the situation. There really isn’t anything on anyway, but grr, it’d be nice to at least watch a movie on something other than a computer monitor.

  1. 1 Wolverine’s Den » Blog Archive » First Light for Venus Express

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