The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Monday Press Conference: Venus and a little Mercury
Oct. 9, 2006 | 17:41 PDT | Oct. 10 00:41 UTC
by Brad Thomson
At noon, Håken Svedhem was the first of two speakers giving an update of Venus Express, a mission run by the European Space Agency (this explains the ° over the a in Haken's name). Venus Express was built amazingly fast (less than 3 years) from largely re-used Mars Express components -- ESA's version of NASA's short-lived "faster, better, cheaper" phase. It is primarily an atmospheric mission, and it is currently in its primary mapping phase. Seven instruments are peering at Venus's atmosphere and magnetic environment. Science highlights to date include images of an eerie double-vortex near the south pole. You can see a movie of the vortex acquired by the VIRTIS instrument on the ESA site.
Other results to date include the detection of oxygen loss from the lower atmosphere. This is not entirely unexpected, but is not fully understood because the exact loss mechanism is not clear. Is it from disassociation of water? Some sort of surface alteration? Can you say, "grad student thesis project"?
VIRTIS Principal Investigator Pierre Drossart expanded on some of these interesting results. The double-polar vortex remains the subject of intense investigation. DPS press officer Sanjay Limaye noted that the feature had been detected 30 years ago with Mariner 10 and may be akin to an "upside-down hurricane."
Sean Solomon briefly spoke next about MESSENGER, which is an upcoming (actually en-route) mission to Mercury. There are two Venus gravity assists coming up. The first, unfortunately, occurs just before solar conjunction. This means that the Sun will be between Venus and the Earth and will impede communication for about three weeks. NASA managers have deemed taking science data during the first flyby too risky, so MESSENGER will be in low-power mode and will not make any measurements during the flyby. In the questions that followed, reporters pressed Sean to see if he had any cards up his sleeve for taking data during this period. With a wry smile, Sean explained that since the goal of this mission is to get to Mercury, safety comes first. Pitching and rolling the spacecraft to take data when you're incommunicado with Earth just isn't a good idea, especially when you won't hear from the spacecraft for three weeks. The second Venus flyby, in contrast, should have no such restrictions. This means that it is a rare opportunity to make simultaneous measurements of Venus with both MESSENGER and Venus Express.
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