After nearly a month spent going in and out the upper layer of the atmosphere of Venus, at an altitude between 130 and 135 km (about 81 to 84 miles), in recent days the Venus Express spacecraft has started the series of maneuvers that will bring it up to around 460 km (about 286 miles) of altitude. It wasn’t certain that Venus Express could survive the harsh conditions that are found even at those altitudes but this success will allow the probe to make a few more detections before running out of fuel and finally falling to the planet.