The 18-month MIT-led Venus Life Finder Mission Study is now complete. The Venus Life Finder Missions are a series of focused astrobiology mission concepts to search for habitability, signs of life, and life itself in the Venus atmosphere. While people have speculated on life in the Venus clouds for decades, we are…

One year after the announcement of phosphine (PH3) gas in the Venus atmosphere (1), the discovery remains highly controversial. The original PH3 announcement is based on a single-millimeter wavelength absorption line, the PH3 1–0 rotational transition at 1.123 mm wavelength. The spectral feature was observed by two independent facilities, both…

Imagine our sister planet Venus billions of years ago being an ocean-filled world like Earth is today. The thinking is that at some point Venus underwent a “runaway greenhouse” where the surface became so hot the oceans boiled off, leaving a barren surface too hot for life of any kind.…

Scientists have speculated about life in the Venus clouds for over half a century. In theory the conditions for life are met: an energy source, the right temperature for molecules, and a liquid environment. The Venus cloud-layer atmosphere, however, is an incredibly challenging environment for life of any kind. One…

The source of phosphine (PH3) on Venus is unknown. There could be an as yet unknown geochemistry or photochemistry process. Or, there could possibly be life in the Venus cloud layers producing PH3 (1). In a ~100 page paper we review the abiological scenarios and find none that can match…