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Planetary News: Venus (2006)

Venus Express Orbit Insertion

Special Coverage from The Planetary Society Weblog

The Planetary Society Weblog is written by the Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, Emily Lakdawalla. She traveled to Darmstadt, Germany in April, 2006 to file these special reports on the arrival of the European Space Agency's Venus Express at Venus.

In Darmstadt

I'm sitting at ESOC, having just watched the rehearsal of the big show that ESA will be putting on tomorrow. I arrived on Sunday and ran into a handful of radio scientists who are here from the U.S. for a meeting about Mars Express radio science -- but they will all hang around to watch the drama tomorrow, whether or not they have a personal stake in this mission.

It looks like the show will be a good one tomorrow, provided that the star, Venus Express, gives a flawless performance. People here at ESOC are nervous as anyone would be before such a critical mission event. However, they've done this once before: Venus Express has a great deal of heritage from Mars Express, and they got Mars Express into orbit at Mars all right, so while they're not cocky they do seem to have the confidence of experience. Venus Express is in excellent health now and proceeding toward its rendezvous with Venus apace.

I met our Postcards from Venus art contest winner here this morning, Tatianna Cwick, and she, her father, and I came over for a tour of the operations center and to participate in the rehearsal for the big show. It's her father who's the space geek; Tatianna's an artist, and not too cowed by the experience to admit that she hasn't really been that into space and Venus in the past! Here we are in the main control center at ESOC, which they use for all their critical mission events (launches, orbit insertions, landings, and other such excitement):

Click to enlarge > Emily Lakdawalla, Tatianna Cwick, and Gary Cwick The winner of The Planetary Society's Venus Express Art Contest, Tatianna Cwick, and her father joined The Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, Emily Lakdawalla, in Darmstadt, Germany on April 12, 2006 to witness the exciting events surrounding the orbit insertion of Venus Express. Here, they stand inside the main control room at the European Space Operations Centre.

The show starts early tomorrow morning, with the doors opening at 07:30 here. There isn't wireless Internet access in the big room where the show is taking place, so I won't be able to post as frequently as I sometimes have on critical mission events. Instead, I'll take notes on what happens and when things get quiet I'll run back to the press room to post. So I probably won't have the news here first, but I'll try to relay some fun details about the events. At least I hope it is fun. There's nothing much left that humans can really do at this point to make anything work better -- it's up to Venus Express now to do everything right tomorrow. Good luck!

Is your artwork here?

One of the things I was delighted to see here at ESA's European Space Operations Centre as soon as I walked into the big conference room was the displays that ESA has put together of what looks like a hundred or so of the Postcards from Venus art contest entries -- not just the winners but a large number of the other entries as well. They are on large boards that completely encircle the conference room. I took pictures of them all and made a quick-and-dirty mosaic so that those of you who entered the contest can look and see if you are here!

Click to enlarge > "Postcards from Venus" artwork displayed at ESOC At the Venus Express orbit insertion event held at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, ESA shows off a few dozen of the artworks submitted to the Venus Express Art Contest.

All of the press who are gathered to cover the Venus Express orbit insertion, as well as lots of scientists, engineers, and government ministers, will be seeing these artworks tomorrow, and hopefully they will be able to leave the displays up for some time. It's very cheery to have the room surrounded by these artworks. I don't know if this is what ESA intended, but it makes it seem as though all the contest entrants are representing all of the interested people around the world who couldn't come to the event held here in Darmstadt, but are here in spirit, cheering Venus Express on to success.

Timeline of tomorrow's Venus Orbit Insertion events

I posted this timeline as a news story last week, but I got a couple more pieces of information today that I inserted into it. This is the timeline we'll all be watching very closely tomorrow, to see if everything unfolds as planned. Only 13 hours until the first event on the timeline!

The Venus Express show is about to begin

After an all-too-short night I am back at ESOC for the big show surrounding the arrival of Venus Express at Venus. The main engine burn is due to begin in under an hour. The mood here is very upbeat; there is very little trepidation in the environment, just lots of excitement. They have done everything they can to make sure that nothing goes wrong, to the extent of turning off all of the science instruments (a month ago!) and even turning off much of the autonomy on the spacecraft. Lots of spacecraft brainpower is typically focused on preserving the life of the spacecraft if an anomaly is detected, usually by shutting down all but the most critcal systems and rotating to face Earth for further instruction. But such a fallback to a "safe mode" would be disastrous for a spacecraft attempting to enter orbit at a planet. So they have turned off most of the intelligence for handling problems, leaving the spacecraft with a single set of instructions: fire that engine -- or else!

I've scoped out my seat in the big room...I will be sitting up front with the VIPs, including art contest winner Tatianna and her father, for the opening of the big show, and will probably remain there (snapping photos) until after the main engine burn starts, or is due to start. Once I get news about a status change on the spacecraft, I'll have to dash down the hall to the press center to file my next blog entry. So my next note probably won't show up until 9:30 local time (07:30 UTC)...

Cross your fingers...

Main engine burn has begun!

Here we go! One of the graphs we can watch in the big room shows Doppler tracking of the spacecraft by the Deep Space Network station in Madrid, and it suddenly took a little hook and then a BIG drop -- a big shift in spacecraft velocity that came from a big shove from the engines. It started right on time -- Venus Express is braking into orbit!

At this point, until 7:45 UTC when loss of contact is expected as the spacecraft goes behind Venus, there should be no further news, unless something goes terribly wrong. So I shall run back to the big room, and if you don't hear from me until then, everything continues to go well.

It looks as though occultation has begun

I never actually heard an announcement of this, but in the big room where the show is on they continued to show the live-updated Doppler graph, which began to show a peculiar shape a few minutes ago. The Doppler track was a relatively straight, horizontal line on the graph -- signifying a constant speed -- until the main engine burn started, when it took a steep downward, linear dip. But then fifteen minutes ago, that slope began to shallow again. At the time, spacecraft operations manager Andrea Accommazzo was speaking to the crowd, and he took a look over his shoulder at this graph and said that the change in slope indicates that "we are going right behind the planet," he said, gesticulating with his hand to show the change in direction of the spacecraft's motion as it began to dip down from north to south (I think). "It's a good sign," he said. That change in slope continued for several minutes, when the Doppler track dove right off the screen -- which, I think, means that the signal was lost as predicted. Again, I think -- I didn't hear an announcement about this. Now we are waiting for the reacquisition of the signal.

S band detected, very low signal...

After some very tense moments the S-band signal was recaptured, very weakly; Martin Ransom on ESA TV said that the delay is because the signal is weak and needs to be searched for...the S-band signal is driven by the spacecraft's own oscillator, which is more noisy than some, and the DSN took some time to reacquire the signal. The tensest moments yet this morning by far. But it looks like it is still there...now, is its main engine still burning? One presumes so, but I don't know...they do look very happy and relieved in the main operations center though.

Speaking of the control room, I should mention a funny comment made by Manfred Warhaut, the Venus Express Flight Operations Director, during the morning's program. Looking at the unusually large number of people gathering in the control room, he remarked, "for the first time, we have allowed high level management into the control room," a comment that elicited a chuckle from the audience. In fact, Warhaut continued, the extra bodies were only permitted in the room because "we have no live control of the spacecraft, and we are glad of the moral support." How tense it must be, to be able to do nothing but wait.

Also, another useful tidbit this morning, is that Venus Express Project Scientist Håkan Svedhem reported on when the first images are expected: about 48 hours after VOI. They will be released to the public, the program moderator said, on April 13 after 4:00 p.m., I presume she meant Central Euroupean Summer Time, or 14:00 UTC. I will certainly be looking for those.

Now, to see if the main engine burn will end on time!

Europe is in orbit around Venus!

The main engine has shut down exactly on time!

"We get a bit ahead of ourselves" to celebrate now, says Don McCoy, the project manager, because while the S-band signal has indicated that the spacecraft has shut down its main engine properly, it does not yet indicate the full health of the spacecraft; that will only happen at 11:13 local time, when (if) they detect the X-band signal from the spacecraft's high-gain antenna. That will be the next event to look for; in the meantime I will go back to the big room and listen to the pithy speeches of the ESA officials. I particularly look forward to David Southwood (ESA Director of Science); he always has a beautiful speech to make. I spoke with him before the show began, and he told me that this mission has a particular significance for him because it is the first that he has seen through from start to finish since the start of his tenure as Director.

More later...

They have telemetry from Venus Express!

This is the last piece of critical information from the orbit insertion maneuver -- they have announced that they do in fact have telemetry from the spacecraft!

Now it's time for the celebratory press conference, where perhaps they'll be able to tell us a bit about what that telemetry said. Or perhaps not -- they may have nothing to say about it, if nothing is anomalous.

A flawless orbit insertion and a healthy spacecraft: congratulations to ESA for another success in its planetary program!

Notes from the Venus Express post-orbit-insertion press conference

It was a very happy group at the press conference, though some looked a little bit tired. Press conferences that happen after successful spacecraft maneuvers contain a lot of celebration and very little in the way of new information, but I typed as fast as I could to record what people said; here are my notes, as best as I could make them, though I warn that I couldn't always keep up with the speakers. There are a couple of very interesting bits of new information that I highlighted in bold below...

Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA: "So we have been captured by Venus. It's a great day, and it's already today a great success. First of all it is a political success because it is 17 member states cooperating, providing continuous support to the science program. This is also a technological success. It's also a success of cooperation. Cooperation first within Europe, between the scientists, industry, ESA national alliances, operators. And this cooperation is not only successful but we have also demonstrated that we can also be quick. Also Venus Express was launched by a Russian launcher, and the capture has been supported by NASA with its station in Madrid. So now we have a basis for a scientific success. Because the scientific community have demonstrated that when they have a good spacecraft, they are able to push the frontier of knowledge. Beyond that scientific success, we will continue to better understand, better predict the Earth for the betterment of the world."

Manfred Warhaut, Venus Express Flight Operations Director: "What followed launch was a textbook story. We have successfully commissioned the spacecraft system. We went on what is called a quiescent cruise, though to be honest it was not quiet for us. A long quiet last night was very rewarding, because none of these contingencies [that were planned for] occurred. Telemetry indicates the spacecraft has very well sustained this maneuver."

Gaele Winters, ESA Director for Operations and Infrastructure: "Our job is to operate satellites and to maximize the return to the users on Earth. We have built up a lot of experience in planetary missions. Everything went as it was planned, cleanly, without difficulties. At ESOC, we know how many things can go wrong, but it didn't happen."

David Southwood, ESA Director of Science: "We aren't finished with the planets. Venus is one more planet checked off on the list. I believe we Europeans look at things differently, we come from a different culture. It is important for us to do our own planetary exploration. But we are still planning to go back to Mars and to go to Mercury. But I have to tell you, that the planets may seem far away, but there is a lot more out there… in the next few years, we will be shifting our emphasis, beyond our solar system, even beyond our galaxy. Our next major missions will be astronomy over the next few years. But it all comes back to a basic question that I'm sure just about everybody has asked: how did we turn up here? That's the kind of question we're tackling on the grand scale at ESA. It's essential that we go into space to do it. Venus is just one more step on that route."

Don McCoy, Venus Express Project Manager: "We've had a very successful day. I think that people have the impression that engineers are very boring sorts. And we are boring, because you saw today that we were excited about [everything being normal]." He gets in a dig at the scientists for some lateness with the delivery of the instruments, but closes with "To the scientists, I wish you great moments ahead, and I'll read about it." His is the first speech that wins applause, I think because this moment represents more or less the end of his major responsibility: to build a spacecraft and send it to Venus.

Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express Project Scientist: "I am a very happy man today. Now our work starts, and we do this now for a couple of years. We have many questions, even though Venus has been visited by many spacecraft in the past. Perhaps the noble goal of it all is to understand why Venus is like it is, why it is not more like the Earth. I hope you all will follow the mission and follow our data, and I am sure you will be very excited with the data we will produce."

Now it is handed over to the press for questions and answers. I didn't write down the questions, so I'll try my best to indicate what they were before each answer...

[Question about how much fuel remains on board]
McCoy: "In fact we have quite a bit margin of fuel on board. We allocate extra fuel for a bad launch, for maneuvers on route, [and everything was nominal] so we probably have enough fuel to do the extended mission, and quite frankly I think we could do another one after that. We have enough fuel for 4 and a half to 6 years."

[Was timing of events today as expected? and was orbit as expected]
Warhaut: "We got all the announcements at the expected time. There was one moment in time where we were supposed to come out of occultation, and we had a delay of two minutes, but we did not know they [the DSN] were sweeping the signal. The overall burn was exactly as planned. [With regard to the orbit,] I ask you to wait one hour. We have now switched on the ranging signal to enable us to determine the position, so we have to hang on another half an hour or hour or so."

[Why the choice of orbit with periapsis near north pole?]
Svedhem: "One reason is we have a very elliptical orbit and we want to have a very elliptical orbit where we are very close to one hemisphere to do detailed studies of features in atmosphere and on the surface. At the same time by having a high apocenter we can have a very good global view of southern hemisphere; at apocenter we can hang for several hours."

[What is the plan for end of mission?]
McCoy: "In fact the orbit will naturally decay into Venus' atmosphere. We certainly haven't got detailed plans yet. But it would be a perfect opportunity for Europe to gain experience in aerobraking for the future."

[How has duplication of Mars Express helped, and how are the two different?]
McCoy: "We had quite an exciting start for Mars Express, which is not good news for engineers; we went into safe mode after starting. This is an example of how we have learned to adapt the lessons of Mars Express to Venus. We have learned how to tailor our safe modes to more realistic conditions. Also on Mars Express there was some question with the star tracker. We took all of these lessons to Venus Express, and we don't have these problems on Venus Express. Finally, Mars Express could operate very well in orbit; as you saw Venus Express went into orbit completely nominally. The only major difference is the communications, where we have an extra antenna, and also the thermal environment, which is hotter."

[Will this kind of twin spacecraft be done again?]
Southwood: "Venus Express has a resemblance to Mars Express, and it cost us considerably less than it would have done had we started from scratch. You get some efficiencies of scale. I would imagine we saved on the order of 100 million Euros in just running Venus Express in the slipstream of Mars Express, which in turn was run in the slipstream of Rosetta. Well, I would like it to set a precedent, but we don't have a big enough budget to go on doing missions of a similar nature. We have to go on exploring the universe, and you can't do that with missions like Venus Express and Mars Express. But we try with the next two missions that we do, Herschel and Planck. They are being built as brother and sister; there are enormous differences between the two, but there are also commonalities, so we get more bang for our Euro. That doesn't sound quite as good in European as it does in American."

[What is the timeline for the coming days?]
Warhaut: "We will this afternoon switch on all the subsystems. We will plan for windows of science opportunity already in this first 9-day orbit, which we offer on a best-effort basis, if the orbit now permits this. If it permits, we have 6 windows available to the payload, which they will be able to make observations of Venus from a large distance. We wish to reach the nominal orbit on 7 May, then there is a period of 4 weeks set aside to make sure instruments are playing well together."

[Will ESA be returning to planetary exploration?]
Southwood: "I can predict right away that my successor may be sitting in this room 7, 8, 9 years from now, because we will be landing on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we'll be orbiting Mercury, we'll have ExoMars in the same time scale. Don't worry, we'll be back in the planets."

[Will ESA be cooperating with NASA to go to Europa?]
Southwood: "With regard to international cooperation, we try to mix elements. We go to Mercury with the Japanese; that's a first to us, and it's a very important first. I think we will be going back into space with the Americans. I sure hope we are going to see the JWST launch, and that will be a joint European and NASA experiment. As for the big planets, the giant planets are almost like solar systems of their own. A big question though, is whether it's Europa, a more complex mission, looking at the entire Jupiter system, or whether you go back to this extraordinary body discovered recently, Enceladus, with liquid water where it has no right to be. Of course now, scientists are explaining why it is so; but that is one of the joys of scientific exploration, you learn how creative scientists are."

[If fuel is not a limiter to lifetime of spacecraft, is there something more likely to limit it?]
McCoy: "Fuel is not the only issue. For a mission like this, you size the solar arrays for leaving earth, so there is a fair amount of margin. Batteries are probably not an issue. Probably what does happen is that the thermal protection degrades with time. The satellite can get quite warm. We may have to shut down some instruments, tailor operations depending on the heat situation."

Last thoughts on Venus Express' orbit insertion

I'm on the plane back from Germany and am going through my remaining notes from the Venus Express orbit insertion. All in all, the event had many contrasts to the last event I went to the European Space Operations Centre for: the landing of Huygens in January of 2005. The Huygens landing was tumultuous and emotional experience. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. And it was being attempted not by NASA but by ESA, a much smaller agency with much smaller resources and very few previous missions (none of them successful landings!); many people I talked to before leaving on the trip harbored serious doubts that it would work, and thought it may well end like Beagle 2 had: having been released, the probe would never be heard from again.

The Huygens landing was a roller coaster: the nervous excitement of a hundred scientists and two hundred media; the triumphant early reception of a direct signal from Huygens by the Green Bank Telescope; the ten minutes of horrible silence from Channel A; the successful reception of the Channel B data; the absolutely astonishingly Earth-like images that appeared; the premature release of the images to the Web and the response of the amateur image processing community; the discovery of the failure to turn on the Channel A receiver and the apparent loss of the Doppler Wind Experiment; and its heroic recovery by the effort of Earth-based radio telescopes. Witnessing all that was an experience I'll never forget.

By contrast, Venus Express' orbit insertion was nearly routine, even for ESA. What made it routine was past experience with a nearly identical spacecraft, Mars Express, two years before. And, as events unfolded, everything happened exactly as planned; there's not much drama when events match predictions! Furthermore, unlike Huygens, Venus Express is an orbital mission that could last up to six years; it will produce a volume of data many hundreds or thousands of times what Huygens returned; and it's seeing a planet in a way that has been done before (though not quite as well), so the surprising results that Venus Express will produce will not likely be evident in its first images, but will instead be revealed in analysis of much more data over the coming months, years, even decades.

It's quite an accomplishment for ESA for its successes to become so ho-hum -- but there's a kind of risk there too. Late on Tuesday, I was wrapping up my work at ESOC and walking through a hallway when I ran into David Southwood, ESA's Science Director. Earlier in the day, before everything happened, I had congratulated him for the mission, and he admonished me not to congratulate him prematurely. Now, after everything was over and done with, he was much more relaxed (and willing to accept my congratulations!) He was rightfully very proud of the fact that Venus Express had been started and delivered to its target within his brief tenure, admitting to me that when he signed the agreement to start the mission even he didn't really expect it could all be done in only three years.

But Southwood was also a little bit concerned about having too much success, at least in planetary missions. I think he said something like "I keep expecting the hammer to fall." Excepting Beagle 2 (which very few people expected to succeed, though I must emphasize that Southwood did not say that to me), everything ESA has done in planetary exploration has been very successful: Mars Express, Huygens, SMART-1, Venus Express, and so far so good with Rosetta. The problem with all this success is that it does not prepare the European public well for failure. Space exploration is risky, Southwood said; and it's all right for NASA to fail once in a while, because they had many failures early on and overcame them, learning from them to build the mostly successful planetary exploration program they have now. ESA has, so far, beaten the odds, but Southwood worries about the reaction of the European public when, as it almost certainly will eventually, some spectacular failure happens. With its relatively limited resources ESA only gets to launch a planetary or astronomy mission every couple of years. If one failure calls a halt to that -- as the sequential failures of Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander, and Mars Climate Orbiter did to NASA's Mars program -- it could set back European space science for years or cause permanent damage to the program by making the public (and consequently ESA) stiflingly risk-averse. I believe that ESA's Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain had exactly the same concern in mind when he said in his opening remarks: "It's risky. We are taking risks in space not because we like risk, but because it is the only way to get data."

While I was talking with Southwood, who should walk down the hall but Claudio Sollazzo? Claudio was the Mission Manager for Huygens, one of three ESA representatives who lived in Pasadena, California for years in order to coordinate the complicated planning of the Huygens release, descent, and data return with the Cassini mission management at JPL. I developed quite a fond regard for Claudio as he invited me in to several Huygens-related science meetings and as we worked with his team on the Huygens art contest. If the Huygens landing experience was a roller coaster for me, it was a hundred times so for Claudio, who was joyous about its success but simultaneously felt personally responsible for the chain of errors that had led to the loss of the Channel A data. The day after the landing, he told me in his typically expressive way: "I feel like Janus. On one side I am very excited and happy, on the other side there is a thorn in my heart." It's almost certain that nothing in the rest of Claudio's professional life will match the experience of Huygens, a prospect that must be wrenching for any leader to face. It was good to see him looking well, recovered from an experience so tumultuous and exhausting that it had left not only him but also many other members of the Huygens team (including its project scientist, Jean-Pierre Lebreton) so physically and emotionally drained that they were actually ill for several months afterward.

Late last night, I was sitting in the lobby messing around on the Internet when I spied Don McCoy, Venus Express' Project Manager, walk in the door with another Venus Express engineer guy (whose name I can only relay as "Frank from Holland"). I hadn't met McCoy before but I congratulated him and he invited me to join them in the hotel bar for an aperitif. When he was on the press conference panel in the morning he had reminded me strongly of several of the other project managers I've worked with in the past, like Jim Erickson and Mark Adler on the Mars Exploration Rover mission and Bob Mitchell on Cassini: they always seem very, very even-tempered, tending toward only the most subdued excitement about their missions, whether the events around them are wonderful or awful. ("I've seen everything, and I just can't get excited about it anymore," Erickson told me once.) Anyway, last night, McCoy was positively punchy -- for an engineer -- having just seen his spacecraft safely to Venus. I asked him something that I'd been wondering about since the morning: Venus Express has only just arrived, but McCoy and others were speaking of it as if it today marked the end. But he essentially said the same thing to me that Jean-Jacques Dordain had said in the morning's press conference; that the mission management and ESA administration really felt that the day had seen an ending of a kind. "I am happy and proud to deliver this mission to the scientists," Dordain had said. "It is your turn; Venus is your planet now." And, McCoy told me, the spacecraft now belongs to the scientists, it's there for them to do with it what they please. "Frank from Holland" agreed, saying that nothing about the mission was of any real importance except the science instruments and getting them to Venus, and that was now accomplished. We toasted the health of Venus Express. It seemed a fitting ending to the day.

First images from Venus Express VIRTIS

So, let the data gathering begin! ESA released the first images from Venus Express' VIRTIS imaging spectrometer yesterday, and I managed to get an email exchange in with VIRTIS co-investigator Kevin Baines before he left for the airport to return to the U.S. from Germany.