NASA Designs Missions to Explore Potential Signs of Life on Venus; New Research Suggests Earlier Existence of Plate Tectonics

NASA's Two Planned Venus Missions Aim to Study Signs of Ancient and Present Life and Test Existence of Ancient Plate Tectonics; Spacecraft Launch Anticipated in Next Decade.

• NASA is planning two missions to Venus with the aim to explore signs of ancient and current life on the planet, as well as to test the suspected existence of ancient plate tectonics. The spacecraft are expected to launch within the next decade.
• Despite its current harsh conditions, Venus may have once been more Earth-like, possibly harbouring vast oceans and a similar atmosphere made up of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other light gases billions of years ago.
• A global warming catastrophe, caused by the brightening of the Sun over hundreds of millions of years, turned Venus into the hot, toxic planet it is today. When this happened is still uncertain, but the effect was eventually strong enough to stop the plate tectonics and evaporate all the planet's water.
• Even though ancient life on Venus might not have survived the drastic warming, there's a possibility that life could still exist in milder, upper regions of its atmosphere. In 2022, a team of astronomers reported finding phosphine, a chemical mainly produced by biological processes on Earth, in Venus' atmosphere.
• A new study suggests that plate tectonics might have been present on Venus in its early stages, similar to Earth. Should this be true, it would suggest that Venus could have been a lot more like Earth, supporting the theory of a potentially life-friendly Venus in the past.
• NASA's planned Venus missions include the VERITAS to survey the planet's surface and the DAVINCI to take direct samples of its atmosphere, aiding in finding more about potential life on the planet and its climatic and geological history.

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