• Home
• About Us
  • Culture
  • Clients
  • Client Testimonials
  • Case Studies
  • History
  • Memberships
• Market Themes
  • Satellite Navigation
  • Human Space Flight
  • Earth Observation
  • Telecommunications
  • Military Space Systems
  • Space Science and Exploration
• Capabilities
  • Programme and Procurement Support
  • End-to-end Ground Systems
  • Simulation and Modelling
  • Training Solutions
  • Systems and Operations Engineering
  • Mobile Satellite Services
• Newsroom
  • Press Releases
  • In Focus
  • Case Studies
  • Media Contacts
• Careers
  • Professionals
  • Graduates
  • Culture
  • Life at VEGA
  • Opportunties and Development
  • Vacancies
  • Careers Contacts
• Contact Us
  • Locations

VEGA assists ESA in Venus Express successful launch

9 November 2005 - VEGA Group PLC (VEGA), an independent Programme and System Assurance company, has had a substantial involvement in the preparation of the Venus Express mission. Venus Express launched successfully at 4.33am (CET) on 9 November 2005 to provide the most comprehensive study to date of the Venusian atmosphere.

Venus Express, one of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) space science missions, was created just three years ago - an unusually short time scale for the planning of any mission – and used the same design and industrial team as the successful Mars Express mission, launched in June 2002. For this reason, VEGA has been heavily involved in many aspects of Venus Express’ evolution. VEGA’s involvement extends from mission planning and mission control, to developing the Ground Station and its data preparation in Cebreros, Spain, developing the simulator for training and fault analysis, through to providing operational support on its pioneering journey.

A new area of involvement for VEGA for this mission is data communications, connecting all mission elements together.  Neil Talbot, Communications Engineering Support Manager, commented, “As part of the services provided to ESA, VEGA is engineering a networking solution which will provide reliable delivery of critical data, to the Science community. The service provided entails the engineering of a ground segment network solution that uses primarily a number of the ESA ground station facilities, along with connectivity to the deep space network of NASA. In addition to this capability, network connectivity solutions were provided to enable testing of the satellite during the early development stages and also at the launch site in Baikonur.”

Dave Whittle, Strategic Sales Director for Space, concluded, “VEGA has been heavily involved in the Venus Express mission from its concept and launch, and this will continue through the mission duration. We are delighted that it launched successfully and look forward to receiving insightful data when it reaches its orbit.”
 
About Venus Express
Venus Express is expected to take 162 days to reach its Venus orbit, and take a further 3 weeks to manoeuvre into its operational orbit.  The satellite has been built using the same design of Mars Express, making it cheaper and quicker to develop. 

Its main objectives is to study the Earth’s nearest neighbour, its atmosphere, which is believed to be more than 95% carbon dioxide, and look at the apparent ‘greenhouse effect’, which could be indicative of the result on Earth in years to come. It will also look at the dynamic clouds and mysterious ultraviolet markings detected above the cloud and observe the unexplained fast atmospheric rotation around the planet and the polar vortices. When in its orbit around Venus the mission is to last 2 Venusian days, which corresponds to 486 days on Earth.