[Thursday, November 9, 2006] One year after its launch on 9 November 2005 and a few months into its science phase, ESA's Venus Express keeps working well and continues to gather lots of data about the hot and noxious atmosphere of the planet.

[Thursday, November 16, 2006] During the reporting period the mission operations have been conducted according to the plan. A commanding test consisting of sending a total of 1600 ping commands was conducted during the pass on DoY 297.

[Thursday, November 16, 2006] At the end of the last Cebreros pass in the reporting period (DOY 308, 18:00z) Venus Express was orbiting Venus at 256 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 855 seconds.

[Thursday, November 16, 2006] Payload and spacecraft operations have been running smoothly despite of four spacecraft safe mode entries since end of August. Their impact has been minimal, with the spacecraft back in nominal science mode within hours of each event.

[Thursday, November 16, 2006] During the reporting period the mission operations have been conducted according to the plan. The solar conjunction ended on 9 November.

[Thursday, November 23, 2006] There has been an important change in the approval process for planetary feature names: as soon as the WGPSN has successfully reviewed a name, it is considered approved and can be used in publications.

[Thursday, November 23, 2006] Names for seven coronae and one tholus have been approved by the IAU for use on Venus. The names are Anjea Corona, Durga Corona, Hutash Corona, Ikas Coronae, Orbona Corona, Partula Corona, Parvati Corona, and Ezili Tholus.

[Thursday, November 23, 2006] Venus Express just received an extra birthday present. In the same week as the first anniversary of the spacecraft's launch, the editors of Popular Science magazine named Venus Express as one of the top 100 technological innovations of the year.