Rocket Lab conducts first private mission to Venus

One benefit of the commercial space launch revolution was the reduced cost of planetary missions. Launch systems like the SpaceX Falcon 9 have enabled public-private partnerships like the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which NASA has worked with small companies to launch probes to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis lunar exploration program. The cost of these missions is only a fraction of previous pure NASA missions.

Now Rocket Lab, a startup company that is quickly becoming a competitor to SpaceX, is taking cheap robotic space exploration a step further. The US-New Zealand joint venture is sending a probe to search for life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, the second planet from the Sun.

Venus seems to be an odd target to search for extraterrestrial life. Its surface is a hell of CO2 and sulfuric acid with an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth’s surface and a temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists believe that Venus was once an Earth-like world but suffered a runaway greenhouse effect due to natural processes that made the planet what it is today.

On Venus, 50 kilometers above the infernal surface, above the clouds of sulfuric acid, the planet is a relatively benign place. Temperature and atmospheric pressure are very close to Earth normal.

Recently, scientists thought they had discovered phosphine in Venus’ upper atmosphere. Phosphine is a gas that is naturally only formed by microbes. The discovery sparked speculation that microbes trapped in water droplets are floating 50 kilometers above Venus’ surface.

Other scientists have since disputed the discovery. Despite this, Rocket Lab is sending a privately funded probe that will dive into Venus’ atmosphere to find out for sure. The probe, dubbed Venus Life Finder (VLF), would be launched on a Rocket Lab Electron in May 2023, according to Ars Technica. The electron’s photon upper stage would raise the orbit of the VLF probe until it reached escape velocity. A few months later, in October 2023, the VLF would plunge into Venus’ atmosphere and spend three minutes searching for life.

The VLF is the second development that promises to revolutionize planetary exploration. The probe, developed by MIT scientists, weighs just 50 pounds. As it plunges into Venus’ atmosphere, it will use an instrument called an “autofluorescent nephelometer,” which uses a laser to illuminate organic molecules that may or may not exist 50 kilometers above the planet’s surface.

If the VLF probe finds signs of life in Venus’ upper atmosphere, the discovery will be a historic event. Scientists have been trying to find microbial life on Mars for decades. Extraterrestrial life can live in warm oceans beneath the ice sheets of Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Venus may be the last place anyone expected to find the first life form to evolve on – or above – another world.

Even if the VLF doesn’t find life in Venus’ upper atmosphere, just putting the probe where it needs to look opens up all sorts of possibilities for Rocket Lab and any other company that wants to use it. Tiny, lightweight robotic probes combined with cheap launch systems could usher in a new era of solar system exploration.

Even if the launch system is outrageously expensive, tiny spacecraft can take advantage of ridesharing. The Artemis 1 mission, currently stuck on the launch pad, contains 10 such cube satellite probes, dubbed “CubeSats”, which will be deployed alongside the unmanned Orion spacecraft once the expensive and complex space launch system hits the ground.

The CLPS program is another example of small, privately developed spacecraft using modern, low-cost launch vehicles, in this case to explore the lunar surface in advance of the first Artemis missions. The Intuitive Machines Nova-C and the Astrobotic Peregrine are scheduled to launch to the Moon in December 2022. NASA partially funds these missions.

Rocket Lab, which has already launched numerous satellites into low Earth orbit, has also launched the CAPSTONE CubeSat into lunar orbit. However, the success or failure of the Venus Life Finder mission will likely determine this company’s role in solar system exploration.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of the space exploration studies Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?, The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.