David Kipping

reinvigorated about the prospects of going back to Venus and doing another mission there.

In fact, there's now two NASA missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI, which are going to be going back and before 2030 or the 2030s.

And then we have a European mission, I think, that's slated now and even a Chinese mission

might be coming along the way as well.

So we might have multiple missions going to Venus, which has long been overlooked.

I mean, apart from the Soviets, there really has been very little in the way of exploration of Venus, certainly as compared to Mars.

Mars has enjoyed most of the activity from NASA's rovers and surveys.

And Mars is certainly fascinating.

There's this signature of methane that has been seen there before.

Again, there the discussion is whether that methane is a product of biology, which

is possible, something that happens on the Earth, or whether it's some geological process that we are yet to fully understand.

It could be, for example, a reservoir of methane that's trapped under the surface and it's leaking out seasonally.

Right.

And so, yeah, maybe it's easier then for Venus because certainly you can imagine just a balloon floating through the atmosphere or a drone or something that would have the capability of just scooping up and sampling.

To dig under the surface of Mars is maybe...

feasible-ish, especially with something like Starship that could launch a huge digger basically to the surface and you could just excavate away at the surface.

But for something like Europa, we really are still unclear about how thick the ice layer is, how you would melt through that huge thick layer to get to the ocean.

then potentially also discussions about contamination.

The problem with looking for life in the Solar System, which is different from looking for life with exoplanets, is that you always run the risk of, especially if you visit there, of introducing the life yourself.

It's very difficult to completely exterminate every single microbe and spore on the surface of your rover or the surface of your lander.