Europe scores new planetary success: Venus Express enters orbit around the Hothouse Planet   Artist's impression of the Venus Express orbit insertion on 11 April 2006. In this phase of the mission, the most challenging since launch, the spacecraft's main engine burns for about 50 minutes, to reduce its speed with respect to Venus to allow the the spacecraft to be captured by the planet's gravitation. Enigmatic atmosphere     This artist's impression shows Venus Express focussing on studying the peculiar atmosphere of Venus, with a precision never achieved before. In doing so, the mission is making the first ever use of the so called 'infrared windows' present in Venus' atmosphere; they are narrow bands in the atmospheric spectrum, discovered in the 1980s thanks to ground observations. Looking through these 'windows' Venus Express is able to gather precious information about the lower layers of the atmosphere and even the surface. Europe explores the Solar System     State-of-the-art science package     This image is an artistic interpretation of a possible volcano on Venus. In fact, from previous missions to the planet, Venus appears to be among the most geologically active planets in the solar system. Venus Express is able to detect gaseous markers in the lower layers of the atmosphere and variations in its temperature, possible signs of volcanic activity. Local variations in atmospheric temperature and pressure may also indicate the presence of seismic activity.   As shown in this artist's impression, Venus is a planet with no intrinsic magnetic field and so, differently from Earth, it has no shield to protect it from the continuous attack of the capricious and violent solar wind. ESA's Venus Express will study how much of the atmosphere of the planet escaped under the bombardment of the solar wind and how much it combined with the surface material. Release date: 17 June 2006