An unmanned European spacecraft orbited around Venus today as part of a mission that could help explain global warming.
Venus Express, a robotic craft, burned its engine for 50 minutes to slow its speed enough to be captured by the planet's gravity.
Artist's impression of the Venus Express as it enters an orbit around Venus today
The main engine burn was begun at 8.17am by controllers at the European Space Agency's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
Success means the spacecraft can now loop around the planet's poles in a tight elliptical orbit, bringing it within 400 kilometres of the north pole.
Now that the €200 million mission is successfully orbiting Venus, scientists have the chance to study and perhaps learn lessons from what went wrong with the earth's closest planetary neighbour.
Despite being created at around the same time, and being of a similar size, mass and composition to the earth, Venus has suffered runaway warming. It also has no magnetic field or water.
Today's burn had to be perfect or the Venus Expresswould have hurtled past the planet.
AP