ESA's Venus Express mission was launched 09-Nov-2005 and arrived at Venus in April, 2006. The spacecraft went into a near-polar orbit on 06-May-2006, with apogee and perigee altitudes of 66,000 km and 250 km (10.9 and 0.04 Venus radii). The main goal of the mission is to conduct a comprehensive study of the atmosphere of Venus and to examine the plasma environment and the interaction between the upper atmosphere and the solar wind. 
Instruments carried on Venus Express are: 
-  the Venus Monitoring Camera, a wide angle imager
- ASPERA, a combined energetic neutral atom imager, ion, and electron spectrometer, and magnetometer
-  PFS, an IR Fourier spectrometer
- SPICAV/SOIR, a UV/IR spectrometer
- VIRTIS, a UV, visible, IR imaging spectrometer
- MAG, a suite of two magnetometers, and VeRa, a radio science experiment.