Introduction to the special issue on Venus exploration

Abstract

Venus Express ended its mission in December 2014 after an extraordinary successful eight and a half years at Venus. The first years of the mission concentrated on the original objectives of the mission, namely to study the dynamics, structure and chemistry of the atmosphere, to investigate the plasma environment and its interaction with the solar wind, and to study certain topics of the surface and the surface atmosphere interaction. The latter part of the mission was focussing on dedicated campaigns for the study of specific topics, often in coordination with ground based observations. The highly elliptical polar orbit permitted a study of all latitudes, particularly of the polar regions. The optimised payload and orbit of the mission, together with the systematic and long-term observations of the atmosphere has enabled a wealth of data to be analysed. It has already resulted in many exciting new findings and a significantly improved understanding of Venus, even if only a part of the data has been analysed so far. In the last year of the mission a two month long aerobraking campaign was performed, resulting in a valuable data set on the structure of the atmosphere down to below 130 km - a region difficult to sample with remote techniques, before the fuel ran out at the end of November 2014. This campaign also provided a lot of engineering and operational experience, useful for future missions that may use aerobraking techniques at Venus or other planets.