Venus Express, the ESA's sister mission to Mars Express, arrives today; the orbit insertion maneuver starts in a few hours (just after 5pm Melbourne time, 7am UTC).
The ship is basically an upgraded version of Mars Express, minus the ill-fated Beagle 2 lander. It was launched in November of 2005, and the expected duration of the mission is of two Venusian days (that is, some 500 Earth days). It will study in detail the Venusian atmosphere and try to image (through the cloud cover) the full surface of the planet. There is much our scientists still don't understand about the Venusian weather and erosion patterns, and this mission will try to find some explanations. Differently from most Martian explorer satellites, Venus Express will settle into a highly elliptical orbit, ranging from a distance of 250 to 66,000km from the planet.
As with Mars Express, one of the main sites on Earth receiving data from Venus Express will be the ESA ground station in New Norcia, Western Australia. New Norcia is more famous for being centered around a monastery (it's "Australia's only monastic town"), but it was already advertised as being the first place on Earth that would hear about news of life in Mars. There's no such expectation for Venus, of course, but New Norcia (and Australia) continues to play an important role in space exploration.
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