WASHINGTON — NASA is considering approving by next April up to two planetary science missions from four proposals under review, including one to Venus that scientists involved in the project said could help determine whether or not that planet harbors life.
An international research team on Monday described evidence of potential microbes residing in the harshly acidic Venusian clouds: traces of phosphine, a gas that on Earth is produced by bacteria inhabiting oxygen-free environments. It provided strong potential evidence of life beyond Earth.
The U.S. space agency in February shortlisted four proposed missions that are now being reviewed by a NASA panel, two of which would involve robotic probes to Venus. One of those, called DAVINCI+, would send a probe into the Venusian atmosphere.
“Davinci is the logical one to choose if you’re motivated in part by wanting to follow this up – because the way to follow this up is to actually go there and see what’s going on in the atmosphere,” David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist working on the DAVINCI+ proposal, told Reuters on Tuesday.
The three other proposals include: IVO, a mission to Jupiter’s volcanically active moon Io; Trident, a fly-by trek to map Neptune’s icy moon Triton; and VERITAS, the second of the proposed Venus missions that instead would focus on understanding the planet’s geological history. NASA has said it may choose one or two of the missions.
The search for life elsewhere in the solar system has until now not focused on Venus. In fact, NASA in July launched a next-generation rover to look for traces of potential past life on Mars.
In light of Monday’s findings, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that is “time to prioritize Venus.” In a statement, Bridenstine said the selection process for the new potential missions will be tough “but I know the process will be fair and unbiased.”
Grinspoon, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said the selection process should be responsive to recent scientific discoveries.
“If there was a mission to Triton as a finalist, and then somebody with a telescope observed, you know, a soccer stadium on Triton, then arguably yeah, we should send a mission there,” Grinspoon said.
Financial Times
Head of Russian Space Program says Venus is "Russian Planet".
Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin called Venus a “Russian planet” on Tuesday at an industry exhibition taking place in Moscow.
The unusual comment followed the recent high-profile discovery of significant sources of phosphine gas in the planet’s atmosphere, a possible sign of life.
“Our country was the first and only one to successfully land on Venus,” Rogozin said, as quoted by The Moscow Times, referring to the country’s successful explorations of Venus in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Roscosmos piled on, writing that the “enormous gap between the Soviet Union and its competitors in the investigation of Venus contributed to the fact that the United States called Venus a Soviet planet,” in a statement quoted by Euronews.
The Soviet Union launched a number of Venera spacecraft to the hostile planet, which completed a number of firsts including the first orbit and crash-landing. Venera 7 eventually became the first lander to make a successful landing on Venus, in 1970, sending data back to Earth for 23 minutes before it succumbed to the planet’s hellish conditions.
NASA, in contrast, has never focused on Venetian exploration — though it did send an orbiter and a probe to the planet in 1978.
Roscosmos has announced plans to launch an independent expedition to Venus. Such a mission would follow an already planned collaborative mission with the US called Venera-D.
But Rogozin pushed back against the recent findings that suggest that life could exist in the planet’s atmosphere.
“The [Russian] spacecraft gathered information about the planet — it is like hell over there,” Rogozin said.
Following the study’s publication Monday, the Breakthrough Initiatives program funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced that it will fund a study “into the possibility of primitive life” in Venus’ clouds led by Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Moscow Times
