Venus Express Inflight Experience

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Venus Express In-flight Experience
European Space Operations Center

• A.Accomazzo, P. Schmitz, I.Tanco
• Spaceops 2006, Rome, Italy, 19-23 May 2006

ESOC (OPS-OPV)
May 31, 2006
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Outline

• The Venus Express Mission Baseline
• Mission Operations Summary
• Launch and Early Orbit Phase
• Near-Earth Commissioning
• Venus Orbit Insertion
• In-flight Experience
• Conclusions

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The Venus Express Mission

• Reuse of Mars Express platform\payloads.
• Fast transfer (6 months), using Soyuz launcher.
• Scientific operations focused on atmosphere

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Launch and Early Orbit

• Launch delay due to Fregat insulation damage.
• Launched in the early morning of Nov. 9th, 2005.
• Less than 53 hours to complete all activities (SA
  deployment, Normal Mode, Cruise Config., HGA use).

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Near Earth Commissioning

• Inital activation and checkout of all payloads.
• Calibration of some critical platform S/S (HGA,
  Mass Memory, Transponders).
• Payload pointg and interference tests, included
  observation of the Earth-Moon system.

Credit VIRTIS (ESA/INAF-IASF/Obs.Paris)
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Venus Orbit Insertion (1)The View From Earth
Capture Trajectory as seen from Earth
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Venus Orbit Insertion (2)
Doppler profile during Venus Orbit Insertion
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Science in Capture Orbit
First image of Venus in IR (3 µm)
Credit VIRTIS (ESA/INAF-IASF/Obs.Paris)
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In-Flight Experience (1)

• Ground Stations
• ESAs new 35-m antenna at Cebreros (Spain) used
  as prime.
• Derived from existing ESA deep space antenna at
  New Norcia.
• Low reliability at first (teething pains?), now
  in good working order.
• Mission Control System
• Used the Evolution version of SCOS2000 ESA
  kernel.
• Derived from the Rosetta/Mars Express MCS.
• No major issues identified, some limitations on
  processing of high data rate TM. DDS/MPS
  experiencing minor problems.

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In-Flight Experience (2)

• Control Team
• Small team (10 people), covering all subsystems.
• Principal positions promoted from Rosetta/Mars
  Express.
• Rotating planner/on-call engineer positions.
• Spacecraft Operations
• Generalized use of On-board Control Procedures to
  reduce overhead on routine operations and
  increase robustness\safety.
• Developed and validated by control team, loaded
  after LEOP.
• Example Packet Store swaps TTC Management
  FDIR.

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Conclusion

• Do more with less industrial and control teams,
  software, ground equipment, spacecraft design and
  spare parts were reused or shared with similar
  missions.
• ESA has demonstrated its capacity to carry out
  planetary science missions at low cost and
  reduced development times.
• Exploiting the commonality between families of
  missions is a viable alternative for cost
  efficient space projects.