[Monday, November 7, 2005] On Wednesday, 9 November 2005, the sky over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, will be illuminated by the blast from a Soyuz-Fregat rocket carrying this precious spacecraft aloft.

[Monday, November 7, 2005] At 07:00 CET Monday, the Venus Express mission clock began ticking down to Wednesday's launch. The excitement at ESOC and particularly in the Main Control Room is palpable as launch preparations get under way.

[Tuesday, November 8, 2005] "This new Starsem flight will boost European Space Agency's Venus Express interplanetary probe into an Earth escape trajectory towards our nearest planetary neighbor."

[Tuesday, November 8, 2005] All final countdown activities for the launch of ESA's Venus Express spacecraft, planned for tomorrow, 9 November at 04:33 Central European Time (CET), have started.

[Tuesday, November 8, 2005] Venus Express was launched at 04:33 CET by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan.

[Tuesday, November 8, 2005] A complex and far-flung network of ground tracking stations will be intently ‘watching’ tonight’s sky waiting to acquire the critical first signal back to Earth from Venus Express.

[Wednesday, November 9, 2005] The European spacecraft Venus Express has been successfully placed into a trajectory that will take it on its journey from Earth towards its destination of the planet Venus, which it will reach next April.

[Thursday, November 10, 2005] Both the Venus Express spacecraft and ground segment continue to perform excellently. The highlight of this period was the successful planning and testing of the Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM-0).

[Friday, November 11, 2005] On Nov. 7, 2005, the MESSENGER spacecraft passed inside the orbit of Venus. While Venus was about 54 million miles from the spacecraft at this time, the spacecraft was 67.2 million miles (108.1 million kilometers) from the Sun.

[Saturday, November 12, 2005] The spacecraft has successfully entered the Near Earth Commissioning Phase and is now on the exact trajectory required for Venus Orbit Insertion in five months' time.

[Sunday, November 27, 2005] A recent check of the VIRTIS imaging spectrometer during the Venus Express commissioning phase has allowed its first remote-sensing data to be acquired, using Earth and the Moon as a reference.