Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Enigmatic Venus. Cloudy with a scattering of life?
Image credit: NASA

Getting a privately-backed robotic mission en route to Venus has become about as foggy as the planet itself.

Enter a Rocket Lab-backed kick-starter of a spacecraft hike to that cloud-enveloped world, matched up with the step-by-step agenda of a scientific group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The first step on that program is the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus, which will deploy a small, nose cone-like probe crafted to sample the Venusian atmosphere using a device called an autofluorescence nephelometer, mercifully shortened to AFN in space lingo.

The Venus probe’s heat shield was developed by NASA’s Ames Research Center and called the Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology (HEEET).
Image credit: NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete

That AFN can measure individual particles in Venusian clouds, constraining their size, shape, and composition in a search for signs of organic molecules.

But that undertaking, primarily fueled by private dollars, has been waylaid due to getting a needed booster flight-qualified.

For details, go to my new Space.com story – “Rocket issues delay 1st-ever private mission to Venus – ‘We are awaiting Neutron readiness’” – at:

https://www.space.com/astronomy/venus/rocket-issues-delay-1st-ever-private-mission-to-venus-we-are-awaiting-neutron-readiness

Sara Seager holds a mission to Venus probe to investigate its atmosphere.
Image credit: Sara Seager