The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
In Darmstadt
Apr. 10, 2006 | 08:46 EDT | 12:46 UTC
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): Emily Lakdawalla, Tatianna Cwick, and Gary CwickThe 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!
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