Venus Express : SPICAV

SPICAV is one of the seven instruments on board the Venus Express probe of the European Space Agency (ESA), in orbit around Venus since 11thApril 2006.

It is a spectrometer composed of three channels:

• the UV channel from 110 to 320 nm,
• the visible and near infrared channel from 0.65 to 1.7 m
• the SOIR channel from 2.32 to 4.25 m.

This wide spectral coverage, along with a high spectral resolution for the SOIR channel and a high sensitivity for the UV channel, makes SPICAV a particularly versatile instrument, capable of studying the atmosphere of Venus from the surface to the limits of the crown of hydrogen at more than 40,000 km, both on the day side and on the night side.
 

SPICAV also has an astronomical capacity. We can conduct observations in any direction of the sky and obtain the UV spectrum of stars or extended sources (UV light scattered by stars for example). We also collect a UV spectroheliogram of the sun each week, taken as the sun is seen from Venus (therefore another side of the sun).

The instrument data is received, processed, exploited and analysed by our team of engineers and scientists at LATMOS.

Status: Observation Service approved by INSU/ASTRO (SO2)
Laboratory in charge: LATMOS
Scientific Manager: Jean-Loup Bertaux (jean-loup.bertaux@uvsq.fr)