On November 9, 2005, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched their space probe Venus Express from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. The $257 million space probe is a less-expensive twin copy of the Mars Express design. The 2,700-pound spacecraft has spectrometers, cameras, and other instruments to study the atmosphere of Venus from a very elliptical polar orbit.

Venus Express is scheduled to arrive at Venus in April 2006 after traveling 217 million miles in five months. The 486-day mission is to help provide clues to the features, status, and evolution of Venus. It will study the characteristics of the atmosphere, including its circulation, structure, and composition in relation to the altitude. It will also study the interactions of the atmosphere with the planet’s surface and the solar wind. After more than 20 previous missions to Venus by the U.S. and Russia, the ESA hopes to solve some of the unexplained mysteries of Venus.