On May 24, 2023, the private American aerospace company Rocket Lab, using its Electron rocket, will send its own Photon spacecraft to Venus, which will have to collect data on the chemical composition of its atmosphere. The backup launch window will be available in January 2025.
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In October 2023, Photon will enter orbit around Venus, and after that it will drop a 20-kilogram probe into its atmosphere (on the night side), which will have a direct connection with Earth to transmit data received during descent.
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If everything goes according to plan, it will be the first ever private scientific interplanetary mission.
Such close attention to the atmosphere of Venus is due to the fact that in 2020 a large amount of phosphine was found in the upper layers of its atmosphere, a colorless, odorless gas that may indicate the presence of life, since phosphine is produced on Earth by anaerobic ecosystems.
