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On Nov. 8, 2005, Europe launched its first mission to Venus. The spacecraft was called Venus Express.
Venus is a hothouse planet, one where the atmospheric pressure can easily crush an unprotected spacecraft. Even from orbit, Venus Express had to survive harsh radiation. But the spacecraft lasted for more than nine years.
During that time, Venus Express saw a weird vortex swirling around Venus’s south pole. It also saw possible signs of active volcanoes. Venus Express also discovered that the planet generates its own auroras. These auroras happen when particles from the sun hit charged particles in the atmosphere.
Late in the Venus Express mission, controllers told the spacecraft to dip down into Venus’s clouds — even though the spacecraft wasn’t designed to do this. It performed well, but eventually it stopped listening to commands. The spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere in January 2015.
Why it mattered
Venus Express established ESA as the third world organization to successfully send a probe to study Venus, following the United States and Soviet Union. (Japan’s JAXA became the fourth five years later.)
“By studying Venus, scientists learn how Earth-like planets change over time,” reads a summary of the planet’s exploration prepared by The Planetary Society. “Orbital studies [like Venus Express] hint that Venus may have hosted habitable oceans before becoming inhospitable.”
“By studying Venus, we can learn how Earth-like planets evolve and what shapes planets throughout the galaxy into temperate, lush worlds instead of sweltering hothouses. Venus also helps scientists model Earth’s climate, and may serve as a cautionary tale on how dramatically a planet’s climate can change,” wrote the Society.
ESA returned to Venus in 2018 when BepiColombo, its joint mission with JAXA, used the planet’s gravity to redirect its path toward the planet Mercury.
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