Venus Express: first months of science operations in orbit
Résumé
By the time of the COSPAR Assembly Venus Express will be already 3 months in orbit and about 40 days in nominal mission The mission science plan includes pericentre nadir observations off-pericentre and apocentre mosaics limb observations solar stellar and Earth occultation These observation modes will be extensively used from the very beginning of the mission The talk will show how these operations are combined together in order to fully exploit the spacecraft and payload capabilities and to achieve the mission goals Due attention will be paid to synergy between experiments in addressing the main science themes