The astronomy community lit up earlier this week with news that hinted at possible signs of life on Venus. Among the most excited about the discovery were researchers at the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency, who just happened to already have spacecraft en route to Earth's planetary neighbor.
A team of researchers using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile announced Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy that they spotted what appeared to be phosphine on Venus. Phosphine is a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with living organisms.
While there were many caveats in linking the discovery directly to proof of life on Venus, it still set both the scientific community and the public abuzz with new wonder.
Missions to space can be costly and time consuming, but in a complete coincidence, the ESA and JAXA happened to already be planning a flyby of Venus next month as part of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury that launched in 2018.
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