BOSTON: A private Mission called Venus Life Finder is set to probe for signs of life in the sulfuric clouds of Venus, Western media reported on Wednesday.
The mission is planned to be launched in January 2025 aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, a commercial launch vehicle provider.
Sara Seager, professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the key investigator for the Venus Life Finder said that the project is part of the Morning Star Missions to Venus.
A team led by Sara Seager challenges the longstanding notion that Venus’s sulfuric acid-rich clouds would be unwelcoming to life. This work suggests that life might adapt to use sulfuric acid as a solvent in place of water.
The mission’s main objective is to detect signs of organic chemistry in Venus’s atmosphere, providing further evidence to back Seager’s hypothesis.
Max Seager, an undergraduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, has also made significant contributions to the research, focusing on amino acids.
READ ALSO: 103 Killed in Twin Blasts at General Soleimani’s Mausoleum in Iran
His involvement comes from a personal injury that allowed him more time to delve into this area.
The team’s research work has been published in scientific journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Astrobiology.
The journals advocate for more studies of organic chemistry in solvents other than water to broaden the understanding of habitability of the galaxies.
The researchers say that a definitive confirmation of life on Venus might require a future mission to return samples from the planet.
