Two years of spying on Earth’s twin planet
Today, Europe’s Venus orbiter has completed 100 weeks of science observations and two years in orbit. We take this chance to wish the mission Happy Birthday!
Venus Express is ESA’s first mission to Venus. Launched in November 2005, the spacecraft arrived at the planet on 11 April 2006 and began science observations within a month. Since then, it has continuously been making new discoveries and revising our knowledge of Venus.
The spacecraft has now travelled about 141 million km around Venus, which is almost equal to the distance between the Sun and Earth, and has covered about 2200 million km around the Sun. 1277 Gigabits of data have been returned to Earth, enough to fill 34 DVDs.
