Which ESA spacecraft studied Venus from 2006 to 2014?

Venus Express was the ESA spacecraft that studied Venus from 2006 to 2014. It arrived at Venus in April 2006 and entered a polar orbit designed for long-term observations of the planet’s atmosphere, clouds, surface, and space environment.

The mission was launched in November 2005 aboard a Soyuz-Fregat rocket. Its seven instruments measured atmospheric temperatures, cloud movements, plasma, surface characteristics, and atmospheric chemistry. Venus Express also produced global maps of Venus’s surface temperatures and investigated the planet’s unusual polar vortices.

Its original mission was planned to last about 500 Earth days, but ESA repeatedly extended it because the spacecraft continued returning valuable data. ESA ended the mission in December 2014 after contact became intermittent and the spacecraft’s propellant was nearly exhausted. The probe eventually descended into Venus’s atmosphere in early 2015.

Venus Express is sometimes confused with Japan’s Akatsuki, which also studied Venus but entered orbit in 2015. Mars Express, despite its similar name and spacecraft heritage, was designed for Mars.