Looking up has never felt more important. Please donate to help EarthSky keep bringing the sky to your screen.<\/strong><\/p>\n Space agencies have sent numerous missions to Venus, including landers, orbiters and flyby spacecraft. And now, China wants to do something never attempted before: bring samples of Venus\u2019 clouds and atmosphere to Earth. Chinese officials recently gave a presentation on the early plans for this mission, which is currently scheduled for 2033. The researchers involved say that the major goals include studying the unusual ultraviolet (UV) absorbers in the atmosphere and searching for possible microscopic life in the clouds.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a lot of debate recently about NASA\u2019s sample-return plans for Mars, which are now in danger of being canceled altogether. Venus is a lot closer to Earth than Mars, but a Venus sample-return mission will still be difficult. Temperatures and pressures in the middle layers of the atmosphere are similar to Earth, but the clouds are heavily laced with droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid.<\/p>\n The probe will have to enter the atmosphere and collect the samples, before a separate ascent rocket brings them to another orbiting spacecraft. That spacecraft will then return them to Earth.<\/p>\n The mission\u2019s primary goals are to study the evolution of Venus\u2019 atmosphere over time, explain the atmosphere\u2019s unusual UV absorbers \u2013 dark patches that absorb ultraviolet light \u2013 and find out if microbes could actually exist in Venus\u2019 clouds. Some scientists have speculated that the UV-absorbing patches themselves could even be composed of microbes.<\/p>\n The mission is part of a long-term roadmap that China presented to the public last fall. The Venus mission would be in the second half of that roadmap, from 2028-2035.<\/p>\n Is there life on Venus? China wants to find out.<\/p>\n \u2014 IEEE Spectrum (@spectrum.ieee.org) 2025-05-06T13:20:23.397Z<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Venus atmospheric sample return mission concept: payloads include sample collection device, in-situ atmospheric component analysis equipment, etc. Launch ~2033, looking for traces of life in the Venusian atmosphere<\/p>\n \u2014 Andrew Jones (@andrewjonesspace.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T08:47:06.004Z<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Needless to say, an atmosphere dripping in sulfuric acid poses a challenge. Although few details are known, the Chinese mission plans depict a winged vehicle for entering the atmosphere and collecting the samples.<\/p>\n An earlier NASA sample-return mission proposal in 2022 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) called for a balloon coated in teflon. The teflon would help protect the balloon from corrosion. That mission was never funded, however.<\/p>\n Venus\u2019 atmosphere is also highly dense, with clouds and haze completely obscuring the surface below. This poses a challenge for any atmospheric mission. Rachana Agrawal at MIT said:<\/p>\n On Venus, we don\u2019t have GPS in the clouds. The rocket cannot see the stars or the surface, and Venus doesn\u2019t have a magnetic field.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A separate ascent vehicle will also be needed to bring the samples from the atmospheric vehicle to the orbiter. As Agrawal noted:<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know much about the atmosphere, so we don\u2019t know what the local conditions are. So it could be a very dynamic environment that the rocket has to launch from.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n All of these challenges will need to be addressed before the mission can proceed.<\/p>\n One of the most exciting aspects of the mission is the search for life in Venus\u2019 clouds. Scientists have long postulated that microbes could survive in the middle layers of the atmosphere where temperatures and pressures are much more Earth-like than on the surface.<\/p>\n Indeed, when scientists announced in late 2020 that they had detected phosphine \u2013 a gas with strong links to life on Earth \u2013 in Venus\u2019 atmosphere, the news was met with both excitement and skepticism. The debate has continued since then, with conflicting assessments as to how much phosphine there is, or if it\u2019s even there at all.<\/p>\n In July last year, two teams of researchers said they re-detected the phosphine and possibly ammonia as well, which is another potential biosignature. They also reported finding phosphine deeper in the atmosphere than previously thought.<\/p>\n Another study last year showed that amino acids \u2013 the building blocks of proteins \u2013 could remain stable in Venus\u2019 atmosphere, even within droplets of sulfuric acid.<\/p>\n Physicist Sara Seager at MIT was part of the team that worked on the sample-return proposal in 2022. She said:<\/p>\n Although our DNA cannot survive, we have started to show that [a] growing number of organic molecules, biomolecules, are stable. And so we\u2019re envisioning there could be life on Venus.<\/p>\n I\u2019m superexcited about this. Even if there\u2019s no life, we know there\u2019s interesting organic chemistry, for sure. And it would be amazing to get samples in hand to really solve some of the big mysteries on Venus.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Bottom line: China wants to bring samples of Venus\u2019 clouds to Earth by 2033. The mission would study the atmosphere and would search for possible microbial life.<\/p>\n Via IEEE Spectrum<\/p>\n Read more: Amino acids on Venus? New study says it\u2019s possible<\/p>\n Read more: Active Venus volcanoes revealed again in Magellan data<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n
Bringing samples of Venus\u2019 clouds back to Earth<\/h3>\n
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Surviving the corrosive atmosphere and other challenges<\/h3>\n
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The search for life<\/h3>\n
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