If an extraterrestrial life form does exist on Venus, NASA may have already detected it a long time ago without realizing it. In any case, this is what a revision of the data collected by the Pioneer 13 probe in 1978 suggests.
On September 14, a team of astronomers surprised the scientific community by announcing the discovery of phosphine in the upper part of the atmosphere of Venus, at an altitude where temperatures and the pressures are similar to those here recorded at sea level on Earth. The announcement made noise insofar as on our planet, these molecules can be produced by anaerobic bacteria .
Thus, long considered too hot and toxic to support an extraterrestrial life form, Venus is returning to center stage when all eyes were now on Mars. But is this incredible discovery really unprecedented? Not sure.
Digging through the NASA archives, Rakesh Mogul and his team at California Polytechnic State University have indeed isolated the signature of this compound in the data collected by the Pioneer 13 mission which dropped a probe into the clouds of Venus in December 1978.
During its descent, this probe, which carried the Large Probe Neutral Mass Spectrometer (LNMS), had sampled some of the atmosphere and analyzed its composition. Describing the LNMS results for the first time, however, the researchers did not focus on phosphorus-based compounds like phosphine , preferring to focus on other chemicals. The LNMS was indeed not designed for.
According to the new team, after a re-examination of the data, the instrument did indeed identify evidence for the presence of a molecule of the same mass than phosphine , and in quantities corresponding to the levels described in the article published in September.
"I believe that the evidence for [traces of chemicals that could be signatures of life] in the existing data has somehow been discounted because we thought they could not exist in the atmosphere of Venus “, explains Rakesh Mogul. In addition, the researchers claim to have also found isolated other chemicals that should not appear naturally in the clouds of Venus such as chlorine, oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.
"What it takes ,it is a deeper and sustained exploration of Venus similar to that of Mars “, they write. Their wishes will soon be granted. Rocket Lab is planning to send a probe into the atmosphere of Venus to search for signs of extraterrestrial life by 2023 . Here again, it will be a question of releasing a probe into the clouds of Venus to sample a little atmosphere.
Earlier this year, NASA also announced the finalist missions for its Discovery program. And one of them, the Davinci+ mission, is very similar to the one envisioned by Rocket Lab. If selected, this mission could be launched in 2026 .
