With the recent discovery of a possible sign of life on Venus, it’s possible we could see a new surge of missions headed to the cloudy world in the future. Those next-generation robotic explorers may need to take extra precautions than Venusian explorers of the past.
Numerous missions to Venus have been proposed throughout the years, but few have actually manifested over the last three decades. That could change now, with perhaps the most compelling reason to visit the planet again. Astronomers found a gas, phosphine, in the sulfuric acid clouds of the planet, and they can’t really explain why it’s there. It’s possible that phosphine is being produced by some tiny lifeforms since we know that it’s produced by microbes here on Earth, or…