The revolution of reducing the cost of access to space begins to propagate beyond Earth orbit. The American company Rocket Lab announced last Tuesday (16) that it will send an unmanned scientific mission to Venus, with the aim of looking for signs of life in the planet’s clouds.
It will be the first private interplanetary mission, and the plan is to launch in May 2023, with an arrival to the neighboring world in October. Alternatively, a second window for the flight opens in January 2025.
Since the beginning of the space age, Venus has been considered inhospitable to life, with temperatures similar to those of a pizza oven on the surface (460°C) and an ultra-dense, dry and acidic atmosphere. However, some scientists maintain that this has always been a hasty discard. It is possible that Venus had oceans in its past, where life could have evolved, and the planet’s high atmosphere, between 50 and 80 km above the surface, has a mild temperature and pressure.
Venusian air is nearly waterless and rich in sulfuric acid, but observations have suggested the presence of intriguing, possibly complex, chemistry in the clouds. Recently, the supposed detection of phosphine, a molecule potentially associated with life, caused a stir. With that, some scientists still think it’s too early to throw in the towel on life on Venus.
To tackle the issue, Rocket Lab (which operates a launch center in New Zealand and another in the US for its small Electron rocket) decided to partner with a group led by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to launch a mission to Venus. . We’re talking about a small spacecraft, called the Photon (and already launched once to power NASA’s Capstone lunar mission). Aboard it will fly an atmospheric probe, the first in a series of Venus Life Finder Missions.
When diving on Venus, the small capsule (20 kg) will make measurements of the particles in the clouds, along a journey of about 5 minutes through the layer between 60 and 45 km of altitude.
For a second moment, the group of MIT scientists, led by Sara Seager, thinks about two other Venusian missions: a balloon and a sample return effort. For now, only the first is guaranteed, to be supported by Rocket Lab. The cost was not disclosed, but a good reference is the Capstone mission, launched by Rocket Lab itself for NASA, with a price of US$ 23 million. In terms of interplanetary missions, it’s a bargain. And, of course, in addition to the scientific potential, Rocket Lab has an eye on the future: by demonstrating the feasibility of low-cost interplanetary missions, the company hopes to attract other customers willing to fly “light” to make their robotic missions reach their destinations. .
This column is published on Mondays, in Folha Corrida.
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