SCIENTISTS and engineers at QinetiQ in Malvern are to help build a spacecraft to visit the planet Venus.

QinetiQ has been awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop a prototype system for the craft, which will investigate the planet's atmosphere.

The data it obtains could aid understanding about Earth's own atmosphere, including the greenhouse effect and global warning.

The proposed mission is scheduled to take place a decade from now, as a successor to the ESA's Venus Express mission, planned for launch next year.

The unmanned spacecraft will drop a balloon into Venus's atmosphere, which in turn will release apple-sized probes packed with tiny instruments to collect information about atmospheric conditions.

QinetiQ's job will be to construct a miniaturised system to track the probes and collect the data.

Two Malvern teams, the Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems/Radio Frequency team, led by John Gauci, and the Advanced Microsystems Engineering Group, led by Roger Carline, will work on the project.

Project leader Nigel Wells said: "QinetiQ's prototype will be a lightweight system carried under ESA's small balloon. It will detect an object the size of an apple 100 miles away through clouds of acid.

"This is no small task and one that draws on QinetiQ's expertise in space system design, aerodynamics and miniaturised tracking and communications technology."

In size and mass, Venus is very nearly the twin of Earth, but it has developed a very different atmosphere.

It is made up of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulphuric acid. The pressure at the surface is nearly 90 times greater than Earth's and the temperature is nearly 500 degrees C - caused, it is thought, by a runaway greenhouse effect.

The proposed new probe will follow in the flightpath of the Venus Express spacecraft, due to be launched from Kazakhstan in November next year, which will spend about 500 days orbiting the planet.