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.