Launches: Life in Venus clouds? Rocket Lab to check – EarthSky

Launches for August 25, 2022: This artists rendering depicts Rocket Labs planned probe to the planet Venus, scheduled to launch in 2023. The tiny probe will sample the Venusian air for organic molecules as it searches for life. Image from Rocket Lab.Launches: Life in Venus clouds? Rocket Lab to check

The spunky little aerospace company Rocket Lab based in Long Beach, California has set its sights on Venus. Its planning a private mission to the solar systems hottest planet in humanitys ongoing quest to find out if were alone in the universe. A peer-reviewed paper detailing the mission was published earlier this month (August 13, 2022) in the journal Aerospace, and its authors are aiming high:

Rocket Lab has made the engineering and financial commitment to fly a private mission to Venus, with a goal of launching in 2023, to help answer the question Are we alone in the universe?

The probe theyre sending will weigh just 1 kg (2.2 pounds) and spend only five minutes speeding through the Venusian atmosphere, taking samples of the air as it goes. Rocket Lab said it plans to launch in May of 2023, with a backup window in December. The probe will search for signs of organic molecules that could indicate the presence of extraterrestrial life.

Besides furthering humanitys understanding of Earths near twin as it searches for conditions that could foster life, the mission is also intended to mature Rocket Labs Photon interplanetary spacecraft, which will shoot the probe into its trans-Venus injection trajectory after being sent aloft aboard one of the companys Electron launch vehicles.

This wont be the first time a Photon has left the planet. Earlier this year, while the attention of the community of spaceflight fans was focused on SpaceXs Starship and NASAs Artemis 1 lunar mission preparations, Rocket Lab sent a probe to the moon, a preliminary mission for the Photon intended to prepare for humanitys permanent colonization of our natural satellite, as described in the paper laying out the Venus mission parameters:

The high-energy Photon, developed by Rocket Lab for the NASA CAPSTONE mission that successfully launched to the moon in June 2022 and also being matured for the NASA Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission launching to Mars in 2024, is a self-sufficient small spacecraft capable of long-duration interplanetary cruise.

And this isnt the first mention weve heard this month of possible life in the clouds of Venus. Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University, told The Planetary Society on its August 17, 2022, podcast called Planetary Radio, that shes found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus for the third time. Its more confirmation for Greaves earlier discoveries of phosphine on Venus, which on Earth is created through biological processes. Whats more, Greaves speculated that life in Venus atmosphere may exist in self-contained droplet worlds that are home to microbes.

On Earth, phosphine is created by anaerobic bacteria, or bacteria that live in extreme environments without oxygen. On the Planetary Radio podcast, Greaves described when she first started researching what phosphine is and why its special:

Its a gas that you find on Earth where youve got these bacteria in extreme situations and they dont use oxygen. So, they get their energy in other ways. For reasons we dont really understand, they pump out some phosphine gas.

That led her to a memory about Carl Sagan:

Theres this old idea that Carl Sagan and some other people came up with that there could be life floating in the clouds of Venus where theres no oxygen.

And thus she began her search for phosphine in Venuss atmosphere. We should add that not all scientists agree with Greaves result. And certainly not all are convinced that the clouds of Venus are a home to life.

But its interesting!

Read more: Life in the Clouds of Venus? by Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan, 1967, Nature.

Bottom line: In 2023, the aerospace company Rocket Lab based in Long Beach, California will launch a private mission to probe the atmosphere of Venus for signs of life.

Award-winning reporter and editor Dave Adalian's love affair with the cosmos began during a long-ago summer school trip to the storied and venerable Lick Observatory atop California's Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose in the foggy Diablos Mountain Range and far above Monterey Bay at the edge of the endless blue Pacific Ocean. That field trip goes on today, as Dave still pursues his nocturnal adventures, perched in the darkness at his telescope's eyepiece or chasing wandering stars through the fields of night as a naked-eye observer.A lifelong resident of California's Tulare County - an agricultural paradise where the Great San Joaquin Valley meets the Sierra Nevada in endless miles of grass-covered foothills - Dave grew up in a wilderness larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, one choked with the greatest diversity of flora and fauna in the US, one which passes its nights beneath pitch black skies rising over the some of highest mountain peaks and greatest roadless areas on the North American continent.Dave studied English, American literature and mass communications at the College of the Sequoias and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked as a reporter and editor for a number of news publications on- and offline during a career spanning nearly 30 years so far. His fondest literary hope is to share his passion for astronomy and all things cosmic with anyone who wants to join in the adventure and explore the universe's past, present and future.

Kelly Kizer Whitt has been a science writer specializing in astronomy for more than two decades. She began her career at Astronomy Magazine, and she has made regular contributions to AstronomyToday and the Sierra Club, among other outlets. Her childrens picture book, Solar System Forecast, was published in 2012. She has also written a young adult dystopian novel titled A Different Sky. When she is not reading or writing about astronomy and staring up at the stars, she enjoys traveling to the national parks, creating crossword puzzles, running, tennis, and paddleboarding. Kelly lives with her family in Wisconsin.

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Launches: Life in Venus clouds? Rocket Lab to check - EarthSky