Venus Express will fly

A compromise in early November between Italy’s space agency and the European Space Agency has cleared the way for Venus Express to fly. ESA will pay up to $8.5 million toward the completion of several Italian-led instruments, including VIRTIS, a visible infrared thermal imaging spectrometer for studying Venus’s atmosphere, in exchange for Italy’s opening the instrument to expanded European participation. VIRTIS is one of Venus Express’s core instruments—its most expensive one—and, says David Southwood, ESA’s director of science, “there was no way we were going to fly without it.” Venus Express will be launched in 2005. Its total tab is around $150 million. (See Physics Today, August 2002, page 24 .)

In other ESA news, the scientific program committee nixed a proposal by the agency to contribute about $15 million to DIVA, a German precursor mission to ESA’s GALA, which is supposed to measure the positions of a billion stars. The German space agency is seeking contributions for DIVA from other sources, including NASA. The agency must decide by 31 December whether to go ahead with the $60 million craft.