Venus Express is the first Venus exploration mission of the European Space Agency. It is currently in orbit around Venus and collecting scientific data. A Graz-based research team is heavily involved in the mission.

The Venus Express mission aims at a global investigation of Venus’ atmosphere and plasma environment from orbit and addresses several important aspects of the geology and surface physics. Reuse of the Mars Express bus is an excellent and appropriate opportunity to make a breakthrough in the Venus exploration.

The instruments developed for the Mars Express and Rosetta missions are very well suited for this task. IWF Graz is the Principal Investigator institute and participates in the mission by providing, together with TU Braunschweig and Imperial College London, the magnetometer VEX-MAG. In addition, IWF is Co-Investigator for the ion spectrometer ASPERA.

Link (Austrian Academy of Sciences) ^[1]
Link (Wikipedia) ^[2]