What happened to ... The Venus Express probe

Europe's Venus Express probe has spent five months hurtling across the solar system, approaching its target, the planet Venus, on 10 April. The spaceship then needed to make a precise burn of its main rocket engine to slow it down so it could be captured by the planet's gravity. If the manoeuvre failed, the craft would plunge into the Sun.

The delicate firing of the engine was an unqualified success and the craft went into a highly eccentric orbit round Venus, its altitude ranging from 330,000km above Venus to less than 400km. Since then, controllers at the European Space Agency's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, have ordered the probe to make seven more burns of its engines and thrusters to bring it into a stable orbit.

Last Sunday, at 2.31pm, the £150m craft achieved its final operational orbit, which takes it sweeping over the poles of Venus every 24 hours. Since then, controllers have been testing Venus Express's instruments ready to begin their analysis of the planet's clouds of sulphuric acid and crushing dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide.

'The spacecraft instruments are now being switched on one by one for detailed checking, which we will continue until mid-May. Then we will operate them all together or in groups,' said Don McCoy, the Venus Express project manager. The full scientific phase of the mission will formally begin on 6 June and continue for the next 500 days.

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