Visualisation of VEx aerobaking. Credit: ESA-C. Carreau
An experiment using a Venus spacecraft, proposed after it launched, has found lower temperatures than expected in the planet's polar atmosphere. The Venus Express (VEx) mission was launched in November 2005 by the European Space Agency with the goal of exploring Venus' atmosphere. At the planned end of the mission, as it ran out of fuel in 2014, it descended into the atmosphere. Several months after the launch, Dr Ingo Mueller-Wodarg from Imperial's Department of Physics and European colleagues realised that the spacecraft as a whole could also be used for measuring the upper atmosphere, and suggested an additional experiment for the craft, in the final stages of the mission. Instruments on VEx measured the drag that the spacecraft experienced due to the density of the upper atmosphere, called aerobraking. The craft took measurements around 130-140 km altitude as it orbited the planet around the polar regions. Previous measurements of the atmosphere nearer the equator of Venus had been used to predict the conditions nearer the poles, but these first on-site measurements of the actual polar atmosphere reveal that it is up to 70 degrees colder and less dense than predicted.
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