juliensimon/esa-venus-express-observations

ESA Venus Express Observations

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Complete observation metadata catalog from the ESA Venus Express mission, which studied Venus from 2006 to 2014.

Venus Express was a European Space Agency mission that studied the Venusian atmosphere, ionosphere, and surface environment from April 2006 until loss of contact in November 2014. It carried a suite of instruments including a plasma analyzer (ASPERA-4), magnetometer (MAG), UV/IR atmospheric spectrometer (SPICAV), visible and infrared thermal imaging spectrometer (VIRTIS), radio science experiment (VeRa), and visual monitoring camera (VMC).

Venus Express made groundbreaking discoveries about Earth's closest planetary neighbor. VIRTIS revealed the super-rotating atmosphere in unprecedented detail, mapping the cloud-top temperature structure and discovering the south polar atmospheric vortex -- a vast, complex, and highly variable double-eye cyclone. SPICAV detected evidence of past water loss through deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio measurements and monitored ozone and sulfur dioxide variability in the upper atmosphere. MAG characterized the induced magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind, showing how the unmagnetized planet loses atmospheric ions to space. ASPERA-4 measured the escape rates of hydrogen, oxygen, and helium ions, providing constraints on long-term atmospheric evolution. VeRa probed the atmospheric temperature and density structure through radio occultation, and VMC provided context imaging and tracked cloud motions at ultraviolet wavelengths.

The eight-year mission duration spans nearly thirteen Venus days (one Venus day = 243 Earth days), enabling studies of both short-term atmospheric dynamics and longer-term variability. Each row represents one observation or data granule from the ESA Planetary Science Archive (PSA), conforming to the EPN-TAP standard, with timing, spatial coverage, instrument parameters, and access URLs.

Instruments

• ASPERA-4: 61,439 observations
• MAG: 14,411 observations
• SPICAV: 35,805 observations
• VIRTIS: 65,013 observations
• VMC: 348,119 observations

Quick stats

• 524,787 total observations
• 5 instruments
• 5 distinct targets
• Time span: JD 2453694.5 -- 0.0

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/esa-venus-express-observations", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Observations per instrument
print(df["instrument_name"].value_counts())

# VIRTIS thermal imaging observations
virtis = df[df["instrument_name"] == "VIRTIS"]
print(f"{len(virtis):,} VIRTIS observations")

# Timeline of observations
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["year"] = ((df["time_min"] - 2451545.0) / 365.25 + 2000).astype(int)
df.groupby(["year", "instrument_name"]).size().unstack().plot(kind="bar", stacked=True)
plt.title("Venus Express observations per year")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.show()

Data source

ESA Planetary Science Archive -- EPN-TAP service at https://psa.esa.int/psa-tap/tap/sync.

Update schedule

Weekly (Monday at 08:00 UTC)

Related datasets

• juliensimon/esa-mars-express-observations
• juliensimon/esa-bepicolombo-observations
• juliensimon/esa-rosetta-observations
• juliensimon/esa-exomars-tgo-observations

Citation

@dataset{esa_venus_express_observations,
  title = {ESA Venus Express Observations},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/esa-venus-express-observations},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0