European Venus Mission Launches
Venus Express, Europe’s first probe to Earth’s mysterious sister planet, blasted into space from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday, with scientists hoping the mission will help them better understand the development of the greenhouse effect on Earth.
The probe’s successful launch on a Soyuz rocket was greeted with intense relief by European and Russian space officials gathered in the freezing cold just after dawn. Last month a European probe Cryosat was lost when its Russian launcher failed. A second successive failure would have put a severe strain on the fledgling partnership between Russia and Europe.
But the Russian Soyuz performed perfectly and Venus Express began its five-month, 26m-mile journey to the planet many scientists call Earth’s evil twin. It will be the first probe to visit Venus since Magellan in the early 1990s.
Source: Guardian Online.
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