"On 2 June, NASA announced it would send two spacecraft to Venus this decade: VERITAS, an orbiter that will map the planet’s surface, and DAVINCI+, which includes a probe that will dive into Venus’s atmosphere.
Last year, scientists announced that they had detected phosphine — a compound of phosphorus and a possible signature of life — on Venus. How this would have been produced was unclear, but there was a tantalizing possibility that it could have been made by microbial life in the atmosphere.
The result has since been called into question, and the presence of phosphine has been hotly debated. The argument might ultimately be put to rest with DAVINCI+, which might detect phosphine when it samples the atmosphere.
“If there’s a ton of phosphine, we’ll be able to measure it,” says James Garvin, chief scientist for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and mission lead for DAVINCI+." [1]
1. NEWS EXPLAINER, Nature, 17 June 2021
How three missions to Venus could solve the planet’s biggest mysteries
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