Bold Mission to Hunt for Aliens on Venus Is Happening
55 comments
·July 11, 2025acjohnson55
daveslash
Agreed. Although alternative to a chunk of Earth as a result of a natural impact, I wonder if it could have been a poorly sanitized space probe from the 60s or 70s?
BSOhealth
Is there some probabilistic named theory for thinking there is greater chance for life to exist the closer to the center of a solar system? almost like sluice box or coin sorter, where as outer planets develop life, get blasted by asteroids, and the remains drift further inwards?
At least up to some distance where carbon vaporizes by whatever heat source exists.
In other words, what’s the mathematical principle for Goldilocks zones
pavel_lishin
I'd love to see a Venus sample-return mission - a probe that descends into the atmosphere and inflates a balloon to hover there for awhile, collecting samples - before firing a rocket to return to orbit and either directly return to Earth, or rendezvous with something in orbit, similar to the planned Mars sample return missions.
perihelions
China is planning to attempt that one in the next few years, following their (NET) 2028 Mars sample return,
https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-venus-mission ("News China Plans to Bring Back Samples of Venusian Clouds / A gauntlet of engineering challenges await a search for evidence of alien life")
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jvl3hb5wle4igkd4qgzk2wrt/po...
ethan_smith
Venus sample return faces extreme challenges beyond Mars missions - the 90x Earth's atmospheric pressure and 450°C surface conditions make rocket launches nearly impossible, while sulfuric acid clouds would rapidly degrade balloon materials. The energy requirements for escape velocity from Venus are also substantially higher than Mars.
perihelions
Atmospheric sample retrieval—not from the surface—seems doable.
> "90x Earth's atmospheric pressure and 450°C" — becomes Earth-like conditions at higher altitude
> "while sulfuric acid clouds would rapidly degrade balloon materials" — Teflon coatings are a solved problem; JPL did coupon tests[0]
> "The energy requirements for escape velocity from Venus are also substantially higher than Mars" — True, but you'd only need to launch a tiny, dumb payload into orbit, to rendezvous with the return craft. Like Apollo, sample returns aren't one monolithic spacecraft that does the full round-trip; think the Apollo Lunar Ascent Module, but, for ants
[0] https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.asr.2007.03.017 ("Prototype design and testing of a Venus long duration, high altitude balloon")
> "Although the expected sulfuric acid concentration at Venus is expected to be in the range of 75–85%, tests were conducted up to 96% to understand our design margin. The material itself was found to be unaffected by prolonged exposure to all concentrations of sulfuric acid up to a temperature of 70 °C. Adhesively taped seam samples did show some discoloration at the tape edges, but there was no evidence of acid penetration into the joint using blotter paper on the inside surface. This test confirmed that the cover tape adhesive was indeed resistant to sulfuric acid as predicted and can support a long duration balloon mission at Venus."
edit: I totally forgot—the Soviets already demonstrated that, in the 70's:
mattashii
Wouldn't it be possible to float teflon balloons (without ever descending to the surface), and use those to carry a launch platform? Samples do not need to be surface samples, the atmosphere itself seems quite interesting already.
And note that you may be able to "fish" for samples from an atmospheric floating platform; there is no specific need to get all the way down to the rocks with your rocket.
pavel_lishin
> And note that you may be able to "fish" for samples from an atmospheric floating platform; there is no specific need to get all the way down to the rocks with your rocket.
That never even occurred to me! That's a brilliant idea.
IgorPartola
I thought the atmospheric conditions there were also quite violent.
rekrsiv
What if we pushed an asteroid into the planet and collected material from the explosion from orbit?
pavel_lishin
Which is why I specified atmospheric sample returns.
77pt77
Have you looked into the conditions in Venus?
It's the closest thing to Hell in the Solar System apart from the Sun.
anton-c
This is one of the reasons it's fascinating to me. We often talk about Mars but Venus is truly our sister planet. But it turns out she's a raging hellhole, the sulfurous evil twin of our lovely planet. Crazy stuff.
The fact that - as the other comment mentions - life could potentially survive in the atmosphere is incredible too.
kevin_thibedeau
There is a habitable zone in the atmosphere.
pavel_lishin
The word "habitable" in that sentence should be surrounded by very, very large quotes.
There is a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure, but the atmosphere is still poisonous & corrosive, I think. It's someplace we could probably put a human settlement, but it wouldn't be easy and would probably be as fun to maintain as the ISS.
munchler
This article makes it sound like phosphine is definitely present in the atmosphere of Venus, but has this been confirmed? There was a lot of controversy over the claim when it was first published several years ago.
goodcanadian
That is addressed in the article:
But a subsequent project, JCMT–Venus, designed to study the molecular composition of Venus’s atmosphere using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, offered a possible explanation for these disparate findings. Researchers tracked the phosphine signature over time and found it could only be detected at night, as it was destroyed by sunlight. They also discovered that the amount of gas in Venus’s atmosphere varied over time.
blinkbat
What a horrible ad experience on this site
imglorp
Ublock origin on FF. I don't see a thing!
parpfish
Is there a good way to Adblock on mobile?
imzadi
Depends on if you are on android or iphone. If iphone, not really. All browsers on iphone are required to be built on webkit, which has limited ad blocking. If on android, you can use Firefox and install the ublock origin extension.
i_love_retros
Use VPN that also blocks ads, or configure private DNS and use a service like nextdns that also blocks ads.
A bonus with either of those is your mobile provider won't see every website you visit.
Xiol32
Same: uBlock on Firefox.
l3x4ur1n
Brave browser. Native ad blocking. Also blocks YouTube ads. No need for any other extension.
null
inquirerGeneral
[dead]
i_love_retros
Curious why you don't use an adblocker? it's so easy to do
samuel
I had never expected that I would witness in my lifetime such advanced AI, and now (may be) extraterrestrial life.
If confirmed, the only remaining big mystery would beto know if there is intelligent life in any other part of the universe, which I understand is orders of magnitude more unlikely to confirm, but one can dream...
i_love_retros
I think we are more likely to find extraterrestrial life than create proper AI and not just text summarizers/predictors
dmead
Neither of those things have actually happened. This is pure, what's the word. Cope?
samuel
One of these obviously hasn't happened, but it might be, hence my excitement. I don't know how likely the experts think it is (~1%, ~10%,etc...) but I guess the odds aren't high.
With regards to the other one (AI), I did not claim anything else than a subjective assesment. I did not expect to see an AI capable of mantaining a conversation aloud, for example. May be I'm easy to impress.
webdevver
forget the cubesat nonsense.
the aim should be to get a dudebro to quadbike on the surface. redbull & gopro will be the sponsors, plus polymarket for people to bet on the outcome of the mission.
actually i dont understand why this hasn't already happened! what is more extreme sports, that doing it on other planets?
its hard to get people to care about the sciencey stuff.
I've even got the tagline "Yeah, we found life on mars." and its a picture of the dude looking like a pirate in a spacesuit. people would (could?) love that i think.
i_love_retros
A picture of dudebro's quad wheel squashing that actual life that we found on mars, with a redbull logo on the tire
Zigurd
Thank you for capturing the zeitgeist way too accurately. Now I'm once again in a mood to watch it all burn.
slightwinder
That's not economical. A human mission to another planet is far too expensive and risky for the little advertising it would deliver. They could do that already on earth, send people to the north/south-poles, or even send them to the moon.. This would all be cheaper and still have similar effects.
But the mindset is probably not wrong. Maybe Jeff Bezos can rent his dick-rocket to Red Bull, so people can spacediving the atmosphere. The necessary security-tech they have to build, will probably very beneficial for actual astronauts later.
upghost
I can guarantee you that if someone were to discover that the "Ark of the Covenant" dataset that would unlock AGI was on Venus and it could only be accessed by a meatbag, we'd be sending fleets.
Given the current hype it probably doesn't even matter if the claim is true as long as it keeps the capital flowing.
voidUpdate
I mean the soviets had a good go at landing big metal probes on there and they melted and failed pretty quickly. I'm not sure we have the technology to make a space suit or a quad bike that can function on the surface of venus. You'd also need to transport over 100 days of water and snacks so your dudebro doesn't starve on the way there
pavel_lishin
I remember reading a short story that featured settlements on Venus, and it mentioned the difficulty of running any sort of engine - rocket or combustion - on the surface. After all, your engine and its exhaust must be hotter than the atmosphere surrounding it, otherwise you're not running an engine, you're running a refridgerator.
voidUpdate
I don't know if a rocket exhaust must absolutely be hotter than the environment, just at a higher pressure. If you open a gas bottle, the jet is going to be very cold, but it will produce thrust. With some quick googling, the surface pressure on venus is 90 bar, and a spacex falcon produces 350 bar in the chamber, so I think a falcon 9 could quite easily take off from the surface (ignoring the fact it would melt and the tanks might crush etc)
the_gipsy
I don't doubt it's extremely challenging. But the initial engine temperature would still match the environment temperature, and it would not get somehow colder. That's not how any of this works.
kleiba
Run your engine inside said refridgerator?
webdevver
damn i thought venus was like the moon but red. still i feel like its hard to get excited about stuff without humans intimately involved. ultimately its all about the meatbag, he needs to be there somehow. maybe in orbit controlling the sat via FPV goggles?
theoreticalmal
Oh boy this is all mixed up. Mars is red, are you thinking of Mars. Venus is the opposite direction to us from Mars
If there is microbial life in the clouds of Venus, I wonder if there's a pretty good chance of its origin being from Earth. I can imagine one of the major impact events sending a tiny bit of debris into the solar system, and a tiny bit of that getting captured by Venus. Just maybe, microbes being able to survive the journey and resuming metabolism and reproducing in Venus's atmosphere.