our world and beyond space in
partnership with the European Space
Agency hire near Lake neuchâtel in
Switzerland is one of the country's most
important airbases it's also the
headquarters of the clan del flying club
whose members go up in veteran fighter
jets lovingly maintained
this Hawker hunter is flown by a certain
professor at lowes and polytechnic a man
who in the tight world of astronauts is
a living legend
ok i had for space flights in the
nineties including two flights to the
Hubble Space Telescope it brought me
closer to astronomy when I was a fixing
apple for obvious reasons and at the
same time the scenery in space when
you're low Earth orbit and we had Venus
also in the sky
most of the time except when it was very
close to the Sun but mostly we could see
Venus bubble is so complex to work on
astronauts get a little time to stargaze
or admire the morning and the evening
star of Venus rising and falling the
appearance of Venus with the naked eye
after sunset or before sunrise is so
magnificent Meneer these beautiful
colors of the sunset and it began darker
and darker and these orange colors and
then it is very bright object in the sky
which is venus cluster brightest object
in the sky after the sun and the moon
it's really beautiful
Venus along with Mars is the Earth's
closest planetary neighbor a whisker of
a 43 million kilometers away the planet
symbolizes beauty and love in many
cultures always an object of fascination
for astronomers its transit across the
face of the Sun was a great event
and the event is considered no less
important by today's astronomers the
next transit comes in june this year and
observatories around the world are alive
with activity at Europe space astronomy
center east sac near Madrid the teams
already rehearsing the complex
observation that will be able to follow
in its entirety on the internet which we
have here two telescopes one is a
classically optical telescope and the
other ones solar telescope which is
specially designed for soul observations
you cannot use of anything else that
observes a very never learned in the
orange and it allows you to see really
what's going on the Sun and if you will
have two expeditions want to slide but
in the north of Norway and went to
Australia and we really can submit
images we will have a page dedicated to
that the way you can follow in directly
the venus transit
the transit of Venus inspires the last
one was in 2004 but before that it was
1882 when it left such an impression on
John Philip Sousa the American composer
that he decided to celebrate the event
in the only way he knew how
after the students appearance will have
to wait until 2117 to see the transit
again
back in Spain where the e6 centralizes
all the data from the european space
agency's missions Venus specialists
recently met to poor of the latest data
and sum up what we know about our
so-called twin planet and then what was
also studying the bathroom
in the fifties and in earlier days it
was in general believe that the Venus
was quite similar to the earth and there
was a dense atmosphere that was no no it
was a sort of the was a lot of water
vapor in the atmosphere and the cloud
layer was just like the word cloud layer
so we had some similar situation like in
there in the jungle so they were being
pictures drawn in those days of jungle
landscapes and even create years living
down on the surface very much similar to
wonder
by radio australia observations that
detected that has seemed like in the
radio frequency range the radiation on
the planet indicated that the
temperature was much much higher than
their on those many people didn't
believe that in trust those measurements
but when the manor barrier made a flyby
of or Venus they had real reliable
instrument that showed that the initial
measurements were indeed right and the
temple was very very high after Russian
and American missions easter decided to
join in the exploration of Venus so
Venus Express was launched in $MONTH
2005
a Soyuz rocket puts the twelve hundred
and fifty kilo probe into orbit the
start of its long journey to Venus
it would arrive 153 days later
in the beginning we did few very very
elliptical orbits taking us very far
from the planet so we could do long
sequences of observations from long
distance and that was very useful to see
and track their how the motion of the
weather patterns were moving and then we
were finally after a few weeks coming
into our final orbit and since then we
have done a large number of different
measurements with the seven instruments
we have on board now covering a spectral
ranges from the ultraviolet into the
visible range and bit into the infrared
range and infrared observations are
particularly interesting because we can
prove through the dense atmosphere and
do through the cloud layer and even at
one micron wavelength we can see all the
way down to the surface in fact in the
stony mountains that surround the
Spanish capital Madrid a 35-metre dish
stands out in the rustic surroundings
50 kilometers away XX computers were and
buzzed as they crunch numbers around the
clock that then by the videos express
spacecraft on the right there oh this is
called row data then this road is being
transferred from several rows to the
either Mission Operations Center in
downtown we receive here the scientific
data on the instrument themes they are
being validated on check to make sure
that they are of the highest quality and
then they are going out guide here on
the sofa completely novel so once the
data is put into readable form which is
distributed to the widest possible
audience from experts to the general
public
we can have some respect from related to
the density of the Venus atmosphere we
can have also information about the the
winds across the around the port of
Venice and always that that is final
material can be access your online or
through the vineyards expresar archiver
website after six years of intensive
observation
what more do we know about penises
mistress
well with the surface temperature of
around 400 degrees the least we can say
is it's a hostile environment but
there's more
Venus takes 220 days to go around the
Sun is a bit closer but the the the day
is in the opposite direction to get to
the Earth's rotation and it takes 240
days but in the opposite direction we
don't understand this at all it's
completely unlike the other planets in
the solar system it could be that it's
um a collision that happened early on in
the in the life of Venus it could be
some other effect you to the very dense
atmosphere and interactions with the Sun
so we simply don't know
ultraviolet rays penetrated the thick
mostly carbon dioxide and self
atmosphere stripping away the hydrogen
is left a waterless planet subjected to
strange violent winds on the surface of
Venus the wind speed is rather let it
sit around the gentle wind but high up
in the clouds about a hundred kilometers
from the surface the wind speeds are
very very high that the wind is
traveling at 300 kilometers an hour and
it travels around the penis every 45
days so that's one of the things we
don't understand why at the surface the
winds very gentle and high up the winds
are very very fast Venus Express
revealed to gently sloped landscape with
vast volcanic looking planes it's
thought the planets internal heat
escapes through lava flows and a number
of volcanoes have been
we know very little about the nucleus of
Venus whether they like the earth we
have a core in a mantle we don't know
whether that's the case of Venus yet the
earth's surface is constantly renewed by
plate tectonics the the earth surfaces
is about a quarter of the age of Venus's
service Venus doesn't suffer from plate
tectonics and again that's an
interesting difference which we don't
understand between the two planets venus
is a planet that guards its secrets well
we still know little about its surface
or atmosphere but that mystery still
tugs us heavenwards to explore and
discover we're discovering new things
all the time for example one of the very
interesting discoveries of Venus was a
huge vortex a huge cloud at one of the
poles of Venus that in some ways looks
very similar to a hurrican on the earth
but this is a long-standing home event
that's there all the time we don't
understand how how its formed why it's
there and how it will evolve Venus
Express was designed to run for two
veneers Ian days or around 500 birthdays
but has proved reliable satellites
mission has been extended several times
when its life does come to an end it'll
crash into Venus surface we will learn
more about the whole evolution of the of
this of the planets in the solar system
the inner planets of the solar system
including doers from the start after the
formation and also until the future of
maybe millions of years from now by
better understanding how planets work
all together in their interaction with
the Sun and in their internal revolution
what comes next is is the interesting
thing at the moment there are no other
probes planned to Venus when Venus
Express ends its mission in 2015 2016
where they going to be in a period where
we can't monitor and we won't be able to
learn any more about Venus and hopefully
this is something that one of the major
space agencies will pick up and and we
will get a mission in the next few years
the adventure will continue for years
yet but why this incessant quest this
designs have discovered
the hands and the butterflies however
they're beautiful but I do they don't
have they don't ask themselves any
questions about the origin about the
universe about formation of stars and
planets we have all these questions
because we're human beings and it is in
our nature to explore as human beings
I heard about the only person around it
doesn't have TV coverage of the man got
the black up now you're gonna feel that
in the picture is failure we arguing
picker
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