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enus Express is Europe's first mission to the planet regarded as the Earth's sister, to investigate the secrets of the Venusian atmosphere, which may help us to better understand the environmental processes of our home planet. Part of the ESA "Flexibility" Program, development costs have been kept down by maximum reuse of components from predecessor missions (this being a stated aim) -in this case, the direct predecessor being Mars Express. This includes both the spacecraft, and the ground systems. As part of the Mission Operations Centre, the Venus Express Mission Planning System has been successfully developed under tight budgetary and schedule constraints.Consistent with the stated objective, the existing Mars Express Mission Planning System (MPS) was used as the starting point for the Venus Express MPS, allowing a stable system to be rapidly provided under tight budgetary and schedule constraints. In turn, the core of the Mars Express MPS originated from a slimmed-down version of the Envisat Flight Operations Segment MPS -with generic elements being identified as potential candidates for reuse.In this paper, we chart the development of the software during the Venus Express MPS implementation, and how the underlying planning kernel has been enhanced further by this process. This kernel, now referred to as EKLOPS (Enhanced Kernel Library for Operational Planning Systems), also forms the basis of several other planning developments being undertaken on behalf of the European Space Agency.

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