Nov 9 2005
From The Space Library
ESA successfully launched the Venus Express on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:33 a.m. (CET). ESA had created the spacecraft to analyze Venus's atmosphere, chemistry, and structure, while the craft was orbiting the planet. ESA planned to use the analysis of Venus's surface and its hot, stormy atmosphere to study climate change on Earth, as well as to help determine why Venus had evolved so differently from Earth, despite numerous structural similarities between the two planets. The spacecraft was ESA's second probe designed to orbit a specific planet, the first being Mars Express, which ESA had launched in 2003. (ESA, “Venus Express En Route To Probe the Planet's Hidden Mysteries,” ESA news release 50-2005, 9 November 2005, http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM56Q638FE_index_0.html (accessed 19 July 2009); Melissa Eddy for Associated Press, “European Space Agency Launches Venus Probe,” 9 November 2005.)
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