The first private mission to search for life on another planet is due to head to Venus in May 2023.
At first sight, Venus seems an unlikely candidate for life. The temperature at the surface is 475 degrees Centigrade, hot enough to melt lead. The pressure is 90 times higher than on Earth. And the atmosphere is filled with sulfuric acid. Earth-like, it ain’t.
Astronomers have long noted various strange phenomena in Venusian clouds. Almost 100 years ago, they noticed features in the atmosphere that appeared to absorb ultra-violet light. These features moved in synchrony with the rotation of Venus’s atmosphere. “The great efficiency of absorption, if utilized as a photosynthetic pigment, could provide a large amount of metabolic energy,” say Seager and co and go on to speculate further. “The spectral characteristics of the Venus clouds, including the strong UV absorption, are consistent with the spectrum of certain types of terrestrial bacteria.”
One final line of evidence is in the unexpected presence of certain gases in amounts that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium. This is important because over Venus’s lifetime, most chemical reactions and cycles ought to have settled into equilibria. . And the presence of ammonia in the atmosphere is important because it would neutralize sulfuric acid, making the clouds more amenable to Earth-like life.None of this, of course, is proof of life on Venus. For that, much stronger evidence is needed, the kind that can only be gathered by a mission to study the Venusian atmosphere in situ. The Venus Life Finder Mission intends to do that with a series of three flights.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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