The hunt for extraterrestrial life has always piqued interest in humans.
Venus Life Finder, the first expedition of its kind, is now aiming to bring dreams to life by searching Venus’ sulfuric clouds for indications of life.
The private mission, led by MIT professor Sara Seager, is slated to launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket in January 2025 as part of the Morning Star Missions series.
Seager’s groundbreaking research, supported by a group that includes her son Max Seager, casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that life could not exist in the sulfuric acid-rich clouds of Venus.
Their findings suggest that the essential building blocks of life, nucleic acid bases, might be stable in such a setting. According to this work, life may evolve to substitute sulfuric acid for water as a solvent.
The main goal of the mission is to look for evidence of organic chemistry in Venus’s atmosphere, which would confirm Seager’s theory.
Max Seager, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute undergraduate student, has made substantial contributions to this study, concentrating on amino acids specifically.
His interest in this area was prompted by a personal injury that gave him extra time.
The results of the team’s research have been published in scholarly journals like Astrobiology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The latter group promotes more in-depth investigations of organic chemistry in solvents other than water to increase our comprehension of the habitability of the galaxy.
The scientists acknowledge that a follow-up trip to retrieve samples from Venus may be necessary to provide a clear evidence of life on the planet.
