Science orbits during the different parts of the nominal and extended mission phases, plotted in the Sun–Earth co-rotating frame (black lines). The Sun is at the centre of each plot (yellow dot), Earth (blue dot) is at centre-right. Venus’ orbit is shown in orange. The data downlink increases quadratically with decreasing distance to Earth, which is why the V3–V4 and V4–V5 parts of the trajectory are ideal to downlink large data volumes.