I assume we'd send an orbiter + probe package. The probe would aerobrake into a low orbit and descend more slowly, gaining more time in the upper atmosphere. I imagine some gas spectrometry would be on board. If the probe was moving slowly enough it could deploy a balloon and remain airborne for hours or days, maybe longer. The orbiter would stay in an eccentric orbit and act as a relay and take more measurements.
If the probe was built to withstand higher temperatures it could descend towards the end of the mission and do more work at lower altitudes. It's unlikely there would be a surface mission because of the weight involved with keeping electronics working at 464°C/867°F.
Piggybacking here: We'd need to study this more in depth first, but a balloon is a very good idea. We need to observe Venus for a long time, make sure this is really really a thing, etc. Track it over a Venusian year, likely, to see any seasonal/daily variations [0]. Try and get some idea of the weather this thing may be associated with, to see how deep the probe would need to go to have a good chance of sample encounters, get an idea of it's 'biome' preferences, etc. Then you gotta design the thing to fit all those parameters, if possible.
An initial probe to determine if life is actually there is going to be tough, but maybe doable. But the real jazz is in sample return.
You'd want those little critters in human hands so you can do experiments and really study them. That is a very tall order, depending on the conditions that these bugs may be in. You gotta keep them alive for the return trip, with only basic ideas of their life cycle and proclivities. An aerobrake, that's hard, but doable. But if the things only live in a thick part of the atmosphere, then you gotta get back into orbit while hanging off a balloon. Or something like that. Not easy.
Even on Mars, with less gravity and less atmosphere and cold temperatures, we've never done sample return. It's really really hard to do. Venus ups the hard parts of Mars even more so.
But Life (if it's there) is just too seductive. It'd be a space race like no other, NASA, ESA, Russia, China, all vying for viable sample return. God, that may be a really cool thing to see. It would totally change how we think of ourselves in the solar system, if not the universe.
[0] Venus is tidally locked to the Sun (kinda), year/day is the same time length.
Because it would be one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history, and that's some serious cred that can build massive nationalistic pride.
It would be one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history. The amount of people that think the moon landing was faked and no longer discuss the achievements of the past, leaves me with a dour attitude towards future significance. It would be nice to have.
Couldn't the same thing be said about gene editing, or deep sea research, or any ongoing frontier research field? I sadly don't see a race blooming out of this.
If there ever were a premise for one in our time it would be fusion, or carbon extraction... but this seems to be either woefully underfunded or in the hands of private enterprise.
Given the way the starlink was heralded by the media, the time of nations challenging each other to technological conquests is now commandeered by the venture capitalists.
> Couldn't the same thing be said about gene editing, or deep sea research, or any ongoing frontier research field?
These are not research fields with a definite, discrete goal condition. They are ongoing research fields.
The discovery of extra-terrestrial life is a huge, discrete goal condition. Everyone will remember which team/country first discovers and demonstrates such life. Few will remember who confirmed it (i.e. who came second).
Fusion wasn't mentioned. Also, the existence of other discrete, world-changing goals does not mean that the discovery of life on other planets is not a discrete, world-changing goal.
A caller asked Professor Sara Seager about sending a probe with a balloon, and she likes that idea, and said that was what the Vega program previously did:
>The Vega program (Cyrillic: ВеГа) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union (who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle) and Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus and also flyby Halley's Comet.
A Russian caller mentioned a proposed Russian space mission to Venus called Venera-D:
>Venera-D (Russian: Венера-Д, pronounced [vʲɪˈnʲɛrə ˈdɛ]) is a proposed Russian space mission to Venus that would include an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2026 or 2031. The orbiter's prime objective is to perform observations with the use of a radar. The lander, based on the Venera design, would be capable of operating for a long duration (≈3 h) on the planet's surface. The "D" in Venera-D stands for "dolgozhivushaya," which means "long lasting" in Russian.
Assuming the study has no fatal flaws there really are no uninteresting explanations for the phenomenon. If we eventually discover there are abiotic pathways we didn't know about, that's really interesting. If we discover life and it's traced back to the earth somehow, that's riveting. If we discover life and it's alien, that's obviously extraordinary.
To the best of the reasearchers' knowledge: All known pathways to produce phosphane couldn't explain the observation (they were talking several orders of magnitude off). Abiotic 'exotic' chemistry is still an option (ie the 'unknown unknown' hasn't been ruled out).
Humans don't have nearly as much experience dealing with conditions like we find on Venus, so it's entirely possible this is a yet-unknown chemical reaction. Most chemists don't like dealing with blazing hot highly pressurized strong acids all day long.
No-go theorems exist (conservation of energy for example, hence no perpetual motion machines). Instead, they tediously had to exclude any process they could think of one by one.
There are known abiotic pathways. They've been ruled out.
There are unknown biotic pathways known to exist (from the press conference, biotic phosphane production on earth apparently still has some large question marks attached?).
There might be unknown abiotic pathways ('unknown unknowns'). In principle, there could be some clever way to rule them out based on the constraints of the Venusian environment.
A sample of aliens can help leapfrog our understanding of biology, just like the study of terrestrial bacteria allowed us to precisely edit genes. Really interesting things happen biologically in extreme conditions.
I didn’t hear any geological explanations in the press conference. It would be interesting if there was some chemical process happening deep under the surface, where the necessary pressures are present, then have it introduced into the atmosphere through seismic activity. I’m not too familiar with Venus’s geology. I don’t think the core is molten, but the tidal forces from the sun must be significant.
The authors of the paper estimated that at least 200 times more volcanic activity than what’s present on the Earth would be required to release that much phosphine into the atmosphere. It’s almost certain that there are active volcanos on Venus, but that much activity is unlikely to have gone unnoticed.
How can they rule out abiotic processes? It's a bit early for that. That seems far more likely than germs on venus. We'll be lucky to find them on Mars or Titan or Io. Highly doubt there is anything on Venus
I would agree the skeptical approach is healthy. As the scientists involved mentioned in their live stream, there's definitely more work to be done to gather more information, and figure out why this substance is where it shouldn't be.
They were pretty clear in stating up front they have not ruled out abiotic processes, and are not declaring that they have discovered life. They state based on the known conditions of Venus and known chemical pathways to phosphine, and what is known about phosphine as a bio-marker, that life is a distinct possibility.
Through further research either we'll learn something new about Venus, phosphine production (which could improve our understanding of its relevance as a biomarker in the universe), or confirm some form of biological process.
Press conference live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0