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After some studies, albeit controversial, have rekindled interest in the possibility that up Venus (or rather, in its upper atmosphere) there are forms of lifescientists do not want to waste time and want to come back immediately (or almost) on our Solar System neighbor in search of others clues. And if NASA goes on for a long time, why not turn to private? So a team of MIT researchers made arrangements with the company Rocket Lab to organize a mission to be launched already in 2023. It will be there first private space mission for Venus of the story and some details have already been published.
Why seek life on Venus
Despite Venus resemble Earth in mass and size, probably the second planet in the solar system it is the closest thing to hell you can imagine. At the surface level, temperatures are very high and pressures comparable to those found at the bottom of Earth’s oceans: conditions impossible for life. Yet according to scientists in his high atmosphere some surprises might be hiding: there, at “habitable” temperatures, life forms may have found a way out microbial. Precisely in this band of the atmosphere of Venus at the end of 2020 some data seemed to detect traces of phosphine, a molecule that on Earth originates from biological processes. And even if these studies were then disputedscientists’ curiosity about possible Venusian life forms has not waned, so much so that NASA and ESA have selected three mission projects in the second half of this decade, and China and India also have dedicated space programs to the study of Venus.
A short and cheap mission
The problem is that the missions of the space agencies have long times, with objectives that in order to be achieved require a sustainable economic commitment only with public contributions. But some scientists, such as MIT’s Sara Seager team, would like it instead short-term responses. It is possible, they say, and on a limited budget. Hence the collaboration with Peter Beck and his Rocket Laban aerospace company that provides rockets and launch pads for space, for a daring one private mission (the first direct to another planet), with departure scheduled for May 2023 (or 2025) and arrival within five months. Cost: 10 million dollarsonly 2% of the budget of a NASA mission.
The mission, the details of which were published in the magazine Aerospaceplans to launch a Photon spacecraft by Rocket Lab (already used by NASA for mission Capstone on the Moon) with one on board small probe to be released into the atmosphere of Venus. Photon is roughly the size of a dining table, while the probe will be slightly larger than a basketball hoop. The probe, in the shape of a cone and with a front heat shield to resist a little more to the fall into the atmosphere of Venus, will contain one toolcalled a nephelometer, which will flash a ultraviolet laser for hit the droplets that make up the clouds Venusian and understand it composition. THE organic compounds within, if there were, they will become fluorescent. However, the MIT scientists specify, their eventual presence would not yet constitute proof of extraterrestrial life (the formation of organic compounds could also occur through non-biological ways), if anything a further clue to consider Venus a somewhat habitable planet.
There observation window of the probe will be very limited. Falling into the atmosphere will have you alone five minutes to perform cloud measurements between 60 and 48 kilometers of altitude and transmit information by radio to the Earth. The chance to really find something I am low but, as a Space.com Rocket Lab executive Richard French, “Our low-cost mission to Venus is a perfect example of what is now possible”. “And the first opportunity to directly probe the clouds of Venus in almost four decades. So whatever we learn will be a step forward. The great thing about an affordable approach like this is that we hope it’s just the first of many […]”.
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