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Venus Express transmits pictures

Venus Express, the first space mission to Venus for 16 years, has begun transmitting pictures of the planet, the European Space Operations Center in the German city of Darmstadt said on Thursday.

"These are the first pictures the world has ever seen of the Venusian South Pole," Horst Uwe Keller of the camera team said.

"Usually we only see a thick vapor layer from Earth, but with our camera we can look into it, see shapes in the clouds and a spiral round the pole," Keller said.

The spacecraft had entered Venus orbit two days earlier.

The mission is charged with studying the atmosphere of the hot planet, which is closer to the Sun than the Earth is.

One camera is expected to photograph the atmosphere for months on end to help studies of how the clouds form and the climate varies.

Scientists are keen to learn how Venus, which was similar to Earth in its early history, became so extraordinarily hot and stormy.

"This leads to the question of how many places there are in the universe where life could potentially have developed," explained Keller, who works for Germany's Max Planck Institute of Solar Research.

"You can clearly see patterns that are similar to those we know about already over the North Pole of Venus," Dimitri Titov, one of Keller's colleagues said. The initial pictures were taken at a distance of 200,000km.

"This is a long way off, equivalent to two thirds of the distance from the Earth to the Moon," Keller said.

When the Venus Express settles into its final orbit at the start of next month, the quality of pictures is expected to triple.

"We'll get pictures 1,000 times better of the North Pole because the craft will be swooping down to an altitude of just 200km above the Venusian surface," he said.
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