European mission's 'Venus Express' lifts off

BAIKONUR: The European Space Agency (ESA) launched its maiden mission to Venus early Wednesday, sending a 1.2-tonne science probe into space to discover some of the secrets of the nearest planet to earth.

The "Venus Express" took off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan at 0333 GMT following a two-week delay caused by technical problems on the Russian Soyuz carrier rocket.

After travelling through space for 162 days the probe will go into Venusian orbit in April 2006 and gather information about the planet, which has an average surface temperature of a staggering 470 degrees Celsius.

The probe will spend almost 500 days moving in an elliptical orbit over the poles, passing at 250 km to 66,000 km above Venus as it carries out the most comprehensive study ever of its atmosphere.

The ESA mission hopes to "lift the veil" from the planet named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

Above all, scientists are intrigued why despite so many apparent similarities to earth, Venus evolved in a way so radically different over the last four billion years.

With a relatively cheap price tag of 220 million euros ($258 million), "Venus Express" was built around the design of the Mars Express probe that was launched in 2003, making it quicker and cheaper to develop. Only one of seven monitoring instruments on board is new.