How Venus Express outperformed expectations for eight years
It was a hell of a ride to our hellish sister planet. Eight long years of studying Venus is way more than ESA scientists were expected from its mission. Venus Express spacecraft that launched on Nov. 9, 2005 and entered the orbit of its target planet on Apr. 11, 2006, was originally planned to last for 500 days. The mission was successfully extended three times and ended in slow death while entering Venusian hostile atmosphere this January. "Venus Express fulfilled its original overall goals, gathered most expected data, and in fact could accomplish its objectives beyond what was originally thought by exceeding its nominal mission several times," Patrick Martin, ESA Venus Express mission manager told astrowatch.net. "It did much more than what it was planned for thanks to both a very robust spacecraft and very professional operations teams."