Venus Orbit Insertion timeline
11 April 2006
Timeline of events during today's Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) manoeuvre, marking arrival of ESA's Venus Express spacecraft at its destination.
VOI is a series of telecommands, engine burns and manoeuvres designed to slow the spacecraft from a velocity of 29 000 kilometres per hour relative to Venus to an entry velocity some 15 percent slower, allowing it to be captured into orbit around the planet.
| Time (CEST) | Event |
| 08:03 |
VEX slew manoeuvre starts This rotation, to last about half an hour, will re-orient the spacecraft to have the main engine facing the direction of motion, and so allow the braking manouevre. |
| 09:17 |
Venus Express main engine burn starts Venus Express main engine is due to fire for 50 minutes. |
| 09:45 |
Occultation starts (loss of S-band signal) An occultation occurs when Venus Express travels behind the planet so that the line of sight to Earth is blocked; it will lose radio contact (S-band) for almost 10 minutes. During the journey to Venus, communication has been in X-band, via the high-gain antenna HGA2. During VOI, neither of the two high-gain antennas can be used because of the spacecraft orientation. Only the low gain antenna (S-band) can carry a feeble signal to Earth to tell about the spacecraft velocity. |
| 09:55 |
Occultation ends Controllers will closely watch for reacquisition of radio contact once the occultation ends. |
| 10:07 | VEX main engine burn ends |
| 10:10 | Announcement by Flight Operations Director |
| 11.07 |
X-band transmitter on The X-band transmitter connected to the high-gain antenna HGA2 will be switched on, and will start sending information to Earth about the health status of the spacecraft. |
| 11:12 | Telemetry received |
| 11:30-12:15 | Press Conference |
All times above are 'Earth Received' time - i.e. after the actual events have taken place at the spacecraft. During orbit insertion, the spacecraft will be 125 000 000 kilometres from Earth and the round-trip signal time will be 13 minutes and 32 seconds.
ESA astronaut C. Nicollier on voyaging to Venus 
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