Venus Life Finder Mission Study
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…
Venus Cloud Life
Venus Phosphine Update
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…
Did Venus ever have oceans?
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…
Are Venus’ cloud layers too dry for life?
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,…
What is the source of PH3 on Venus?
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…
Venus Phosphine team’s response to criticism regarding the statistical significance and interpretation of the detection of phosphine on Venus.
The Venus phosphine team posted two preprints on arXiv in response to criticism regarding the statistical significance and the interpretation of the detection of phosphine on Venus. The team addressed…
The recovery of the tentative phosphine signal in the recalibrated ALMA data.
The Venus Phosphine team reanalyzed the data in search for the phosphine signal in the newly recalibrated ALMA data and recovered a tentative PH3 signal in Venus’ atmosphere (~5 sigma…
Evidence for Phosphine in Pioneer-Venus Data
An independent team has revisited archived Pioneer-Venus data and analyzed the gas fragments measured at 51 km altitude. Among the many results is evidence for phosphine gas, primarily by detection…
ALMA recalibrated Venus data
Due to intense and expected scientific scrutiny, the ALMA Observatory carefully checked the data processing and found a problem with the way they used Jupiter’s moon Calisto for the Venus…
MIT and Breakthrough Announce Venus Life Finder Mission Study
MIT and the Breakthrough Initiatives are undertaking a Venus Life Finder Mission Concept Study. The study is inspired by the discovery of phosphine (PH3) gas in the Venusian atmosphere. On…