Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) was specifically designed to fulfill the Venus Express mission goals in the field of atmospheric structure and dynamics, as well as surface imaging. It will complement the other experiments and provide imaging context for the mission. The UV channel will be used to investigate distribution and nature of the unknown UV absorber, to determine the wind field at the cloud tops (70 km) by tracking UV features, and to study wave phenomena. The night side observations in the near-infrared filter at 1000 nm, which is centered at the atmospheric transparency “window”, will provide for the first time thermal imaging of the Venus surface from orbit. These observations will determine spatial distribution of surface temperature and will search for active volcanoes. This channel will also yield global wind field in the main cloud deck (50 km) by tracking near-IR features. The other near-IR channel (965 nm) centered at the absorption band of atmospheric water will investigate H2O spatial distribution at the cloud tops on the day side and in the lower 10 km at night. The visible channel at 513 nm was designed to map the O2 airglow and its variability on the night side. The VMC images and movies of the cloud motions Venus atmosphere will be of significant interest for the public outreach programme.

VMC will perform several kinds of observations depending on science objectives and conditions. The basic observation types are described as “science cases” in the mission planning system. The table summarizes the main parameters of the VMC observation modes.

Table. VMC Modes and their parameters .

During the pericentre passes VMC will study small scale dynamical phenomena at the cloud tops and cloud morphology with high spatial resolution of up to 0.2 km/px. The imaging rate will range between 5s in pericentre and 300s at the distance of 10,000 km providing continuous strip crossing the Northern hemisphere. The camera has a capability to store the images collected during the pericentre pass in the internal memory and transmit them to the spacecraft afterwards.
Off-pericentre activity will include observations when distance to Venus ranges from 10,000 to 66,000 km at apocentre. At the distance greater than 40,000 km VMC will have full Venus disc in the field of view. The off-pericentre imaging will be used to investigate global atmospheric circulation by tracking the cloud features. Intervals between the images will be 10-20 minutes which roughly corresponds to the displacement of the cloud features by one CCD pixel due to winds at the cloud tops. The vertical structure of mesospheric aerosols at 60-80 km will be studied in limb sessions.