Venus Life Finder

Research published in 2020 indicated the presence of phosphine (PH3) in Venus's atmosphere, resulting in a widespread public and academic interest in the possibility of life in the Venusian atmosphere. Although the probe will not directly search for phosphine, it will search for organic compounds in Venus's atmosphere, which would indicate potentially habitable conditions within Venus's cloud layer. Additionally, the mission will demonstrate an inexpensive, deep space mission with a small spacecraft and small launch vehicle, as well as mature the interplanetary Photon spacecraft. Morning Star is hoped to be the first of a series of small missions to Venus to better understand the planet. == Spacecraft design and instrumentation ==

engineers at Ames Research Center install the heat shield on the Venus atmospheric probe The spacecraft consists of two main components- a Photon Explorer cruise stage, and a small atmospheric probe with a autofluorescing nephelometer. The Explorer cruise stage, first developed for NASA's CAPSTONE, is the interplanetary variant of the Photon satellite bus. The Explorer cruise stage, a self contained spacecraft with solar arrays for generating power, an attitude control system and a HyperCurie engine for propulsion, will remain attached to the atmospheric probe until 30 minutes prior to atmospheric entry. Venus Life Finder is being developed by a team of fewer than thirty people, led by Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. == Mission profile ==

Venus Life Finder was originally planned to launch in January 2025, now planned for the early summer of 2026, by an Electron launch vehicle from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand. After being delivered to low Earth orbit, the Explorer cruise stage will perform a series of burns culminating in a lunar gravity assist which will send the spacecraft to Venus. During the 128 day interplanetary cruise, the spacecraft will make occasional mid-course corrections in preparation for arrival at Venus. The probe will separate from the Explorer cruise stage 30 minutes before Venus atmospheric entry, originally planned to occur on 13 May 2025. Entering on the night-side to minimize background light for the autofluorescence nephelometer instrument, the probe will experience a peak g-force of 60 Gs and will descend through the atmosphere without a parachute. The probe will have just five minutes in the cloud layer, between to in altitude, to perform its measurements. The probe will directly transmit its data to Earth by S-band until expected loss of signal thirty minutes after atmospheric entry, after which it will impact the Venusian surface. Due to constraints on the power of the transmitter and limited transmission time, the data collected will be sent through the channel of 125 bytes/second bandwidth. To optimize transmission, a neural network will be trained on laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations to integrate detector data and extract the most critical information. The network's outputs, together with the most important raw data, will be transmitted to Earth. == See also ==