Isro plans to send Shukrayaan-1 to Venus in 2023, with NASA discovering life on the planet

On Monday, a team of astronomers said they have discovered a possible indication of life in the Venus atmosphere.

The Venus’s atmosphere includes a gas that on Earth can be connected to existing organisms, scientists said. The head of NASA termed “the most significant progress yet” in the quest for extraterrestrial being.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has previously set a mission to Venus called ‘Shukrayaan-1’. It will orbit Venus and check on the chemistry of its atmosphere.

K Sivan, Isro chairman had said, “The mission will launch in 2023 or after.”

The New York Times in a report on Venus stated, a New Zealand’s private company has sent out many rockets to space and has been planning to send a satellite to Venus.

The report said that NASA had also thought several Venus projects in the past, two in 2017 that was of NASA’s Discovery program as a finalist.

NASA in 2017’s New Frontiers competition held a Venus project- Venus In situ Composition Investigations, or VICI, that was tried to install two landers on the planet’s surface.

DAVINCI+ and VERITAS are the two Venus spacecraft that are competing on intended missions to Neptune’s moon Triton or Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of NASA’s science mission directorate said to New York Times, “We should also recognise that Venus is a planetary destination we can reach with smaller missions as well.”