From mars express flight experience to venus express inflight validation

Venus Express, along with Mars Express is part of a comprehensive European study of terrestrial planets. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express mission, launched in June 2003, was inserted in Martian orbit in December 2003. The Venus Express development started late in 2002, reuses the Mars Express design and the same industrial team. This approach, not only represented a significant cost saving, but gave the opportunity to improve the Venus Express design and operations by using the flight experience gained with Mars Express. This paper introduces the Venus mission and describes how the Mars Express in-flight experience was implemented on Venus Express during its development. Furthermore, the paper will present the flight experience of Venus Express during the post launch commissioning and verification phase from late November 2005 to January 2006, covering spacecraft unit verification, AOCS characterisation, alignment verification and payload pointing. Finally, the results of initial Trajectory Correction Maneuvers will also be discussed together with an outline for the Venus Orbit Insertion Strategy.