A private mission to Venus aims to look for signs of life

BOSTON —Droplets of Venus’ clouds may someday come to Earth. Researchers are testing a device that can gather mist from our planetary neighbor’s atmosphere and deliver it to scientists so they can test the samples for signs of life.

Venus is not an obvious place to look for life. Its globe-spanning cloud decks are made of sulfuric acid, “a feature that was long believed to be sterile for any organic chemistry,” said MIT planetary scientist Iaroslav Iakubivskyi in a Feb. 15 talk at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

But in the last few years, lab experiments by Iakubivskyi and colleagues have suggested that sulfuric acid can support the organic chemistry that gives rise to stable nucleic and amino acids — the building blocks of DNA and proteins. Together, the data suggest that “rather than being a disruptive force, sulfuric acid might actually serve as a potential solvent for life-essential molecules,” he said. “Still, we have to go to Venus to test it.”

Iakubivskyi’s team is working with the private spaceflight company Rocket Lab on a series of Venus probes called the Morning Star Missions. The first, a probe that will fall through Venus’ atmosphere and measure the sizes of sulfuric acid droplets, is slated to launch in 2026. A later mission would use a two-ton rocket to launch samples into Venus’ orbit to be picked up by a spacecraft returning to Earth. If successful, Morning Star would be the first private mission to another planet.

Inspired by fog-catching plants in the Atacama desert, the team built a prototype cloud catcher from four layers of wire mesh. The wires can be charged to ionize atmospheric droplets and attract them to the mesh.

The researchers tested the device by collecting sulfuric acid mist in controlled laboratory conditions, atmospheric particles carried by high winds on Mount Washington in New Hampshire and steam and gas emitted from volcanic vents on Kilauea in Hawaii.

“Overall, all of these results demonstrated the viability of collecting clouds from Venus and bringing us closer to understanding chemistry and potential for life there,” Iakubivskyi said.

The mission would be the first to directly measure Venus’ clouds since 1985, when the Soviet Union’s VEGA mission deployed balloons into the planet’s atmosphere on its way to rendezvous with Halley’s Comet.

Morning Star isn’t alone in its aspirations. NASA and the European Space Agency both plan to send spacecraft to Venus within the next decade.

“We’re now entering a new era of Venus exploration,” Iakubivskyi said.