Lift-off for Venus Express Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Amongst others, both the BBC an MSNBC are reporting on the successful launch of ESA's Venus Express spacecraft from Baikonur at 03:33 UT this morning.

CREDIT: ESA/Starsem

The launch of the Soyuz-Fregat rocket carrying Venus Express.

Unlike the American space programme the Russians seem to accept that failure is something that is sometimes going to happen when you launch spacecraft, the Americans almost seem to take it as a personal insult, and assume it has to be someone's fault. However there has been a string of launch failures for the Russian programme recently, not least the loss of Cosmos-1 and Cryosat, so it's good to see things going right for them again...

Update: Slashdot and The Register have more...

Update: The Venus Express post-launch summary from ESA.

Tags: Venus Express Launch ESA Baikonur