You could say that Venus is the forgotten world of the inner solar system.
Outshined, figuratively, by her superficially more interesting brother Mars, Venus holds
both the potential for microbial life and the eventual potential of terraforming and
human colonization.
And, as I pointed out in my video "Colonizing and Terraforming Venus" it has advantages
that Mars does not.
But that forgotten status may soon change if a new space probe targeting the planet
is approved.
Its name is Venera D after the venerable soviet-era Russian probes and landers of the 1970's and
80's that brought us the first pictures from the surface of Venus.
And while Venus has not been a high priority for NASA, they have their eyes on Mars, RosCosmos
has never lost interest in Venus and hopefully will collaborate with NASA on this mission
and once again visit earth's sister world launching in 2025.
The mission, as planned right now, would include an orbiter designed to study both the atmosphere
and surface in detail from orbit using powerful radar, but also to deploy a robust lander
on the surface.
And it would need to be robust, the rough conditions of the surface have only allowed
for previous probes to survive for less than a few hours.
Possible additions to the mission include a drone designed to cruise the clouds of Venus,
a second micro orbiter for studying Venus' magnetosphere, such as it is given that it
basically borrows one from the sun, and even a high altitude balloon.
There are many reasons to study Venus' atmosphere directly.
One reason is that for some unknown reason the atmosphere rotates significantly faster
than the planet does.
This super-rotation was discovered by studying an even stranger phenomenon.
Within Venus' atmosphere there are dark streaks that display some strange properties.
After knowing about the streaks since the 1960's to this day we have no idea what they
are or why they are there.
The streaks are odd.
They should have long ago mixed in with the atmosphere and disappeared.
They have not.
And, even stranger, they absorb ultraviolet light which somewhat restricts what they could
be made of.
We know nothing about their composition, but one possibility is that they are made up of
iron chloride.
Think of it as a kind of atmospheric ice, sort of like ice crystals in earth's atmosphere
but in the much hotter conditions of Venus.
The problem with that theory is that the iron chloride would need to be coming from the
surface.
The trouble is there doesn't appear to be a way for that to happen, Venus' winds in
the lower dense atmosphere are too weak.
It could also be some other chemical dissolved or partially dissolved in Venus' atmosphere,
but again, how it hasn't mixed in with the rest of the atmosphere is unknown.
Given that the explanations thus far aren't very good, it's worth considering another
possibility.
Microbial life.
Microbes living in an atmosphere is nothing new.
We find tons of them in earth's atmosphere.
More, while Venus is extraordinarily hot, one area of it isn't.
There is a region about 30 to 40 miles above the surface of Venus where the temperature
and atmospheric pressure is earth-like.
This also seems to be the location of the dark streaks.
Intriguing indeed.
And, oddly enough earlier Venera missions did detect some kind of elongated particles
in the atmosphere that were about the right size for a bacterium.
But there's a huge hurdle.
Venus' atmosphere is loaded with sulfuric acid.
This is nasty stuff that life would have a hard time with.
That is, unarmored life.
Within Venus' atmosphere interesting molecules have been found that are called S8 molecules.
Made up of a ring of sulfur atoms, these molecules are immune to the effects of sulfuric acid.
If Venera's particles are indeed bacteria, they could have incorporated S8 during their
evolution and essentially armored themselves.
Even more interesting is the fact that S8 does absorb ultraviolet light, meaning that
it could be the culprit for the streaks.
It's even been suggested that the presence of the S8 could be a direct result of microbial
life.
Because of all of this, an investigation of the potential for life in Venus' atmosphere
is being looked at as one of the Venera D mission objectives.
Key to this however would be the drone.
Balloons are hard to maneuver, so to get to the layer where the bacteria might be you
would need a controllable aircraft.
This is not so far fetched as you might think, it should be easily possible to build a solar
powered UAV filled with hydrogen as a sort of hybrid balloon/airplane, something like
a blimp.
Northrop Grumman has a concept for just such a vehicle.
Known as VAMP or the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, it would be huge with a 180 foot
wingspan and a mission length of an entire year without ever landing.
It would deploy from the orbiter and fall like a leaf through Venus' atmosphere until
reaching the optimum altitude for the mission and then essentially fly anywhere in the atmosphere
we need to go with a 100 lb capacity for scientific instruments.
A final plan for the mission will be submitted at the end of this month.
An answer whether NASA and Roscosmos wish to accept the mission and collaborate will
come at the end of 2017 or sometime in 2018.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently hoping that Venera
D happens, I just find the whole mission fascinating and be sure to check out my books at your
favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations
in the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.