Rocket Lab postpones Venus mission, possibly until 2025

Rocket Lab postpones the first private discovery mission to Venus. The company was initially expected to send a small probe to the planet in May this year to look for organic molecules in the atmosphere. The mission may now not go up until January 2025.

Rocket Lab says launch of first private mission to planet ‘not imminent’ reports TechCrunch. Although Rocket Lab has not mentioned a new date, it appears from a 2022 research paper that January 2025 will be available as a backup for launch.

Company announced the first private mission to Venus in August, in collaboration with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and several other organizations. Rocket Lab wants to send a small probe, forty centimeters in diameter, to the cloud layer of Venus to look for organic molecules or other signs of life on the planet. In 2020, phosphine, a chemical that can be produced by living organisms, may have been discovered on Venus. Not however, all experts agree that it is phosphine.

The mini-probe will be launched on Rocket Lab’s own Electron rocket and later sent to about fifty kilometers above the surface of Venus with the Photon capsule. There the atmospheric conditions are most similar to those of Earth. A second goal of the mission is also to further develop the Photon stage. That’s the part of Rocket Lab’s rocket that releases satellites. The Photon was originally developed for NASA’s Capstone mission, which launched in June 2022.

Rocket Lab’s mission is unique because it is the first completely private mission to Venus. Up to thirty other missions have already been sent to Venus, but all were carried out by national space agencies such as NASA or Roscosmos.