I assume we'd send an orbiter + probe package. The probe would aerobrake into a low orbit and descend more slowly, gaining more time in the upper atmosphere. I imagine some gas spectrometry would be on board. If the probe was moving slowly enough it could deploy a balloon and remain airborne for hours or days, maybe longer. The orbiter would stay in an eccentric orbit and act as a relay and take more measurements.
If the probe was built to withstand higher temperatures it could descend towards the end of the mission and do more work at lower altitudes. It's unlikely there would be a surface mission because of the weight involved with keeping electronics working at 464°C/867°F.
Piggybacking here: We'd need to study this more in depth first, but a balloon is a very good idea. We need to observe Venus for a long time, make sure this is really really a thing, etc. Track it over a Venusian year, likely, to see any seasonal/daily variations [0]. Try and get some idea of the weather this thing may be associated with, to see how deep the probe would need to go to have a good chance of sample encounters, get an idea of it's 'biome' preferences, etc. Then you gotta design the thing to fit all those parameters, if possible.
An initial probe to determine if life is actually there is going to be tough, but maybe doable. But the real jazz is in sample return.
You'd want those little critters in human hands so you can do experiments and really study them. That is a very tall order, depending on the conditions that these bugs may be in. You gotta keep them alive for the return trip, with only basic ideas of their life cycle and proclivities. An aerobrake, that's hard, but doable. But if the things only live in a thick part of the atmosphere, then you gotta get back into orbit while hanging off a balloon. Or something like that. Not easy.
Even on Mars, with less gravity and less atmosphere and cold temperatures, we've never done sample return. It's really really hard to do. Venus ups the hard parts of Mars even more so.
But Life (if it's there) is just too seductive. It'd be a space race like no other, NASA, ESA, Russia, China, all vying for viable sample return. God, that may be a really cool thing to see. It would totally change how we think of ourselves in the solar system, if not the universe.
[0] Venus is tidally locked to the Sun (kinda), year/day is the same time length.
Because it would be one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history, and that's some serious cred that can build massive nationalistic pride.
It would be one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history. The amount of people that think the moon landing was faked and no longer discuss the achievements of the past, leaves me with a dour attitude towards future significance. It would be nice to have.
Couldn't the same thing be said about gene editing, or deep sea research, or any ongoing frontier research field? I sadly don't see a race blooming out of this.
If there ever were a premise for one in our time it would be fusion, or carbon extraction... but this seems to be either woefully underfunded or in the hands of private enterprise.
Given the way the starlink was heralded by the media, the time of nations challenging each other to technological conquests is now commandeered by the venture capitalists.
> Couldn't the same thing be said about gene editing, or deep sea research, or any ongoing frontier research field?
These are not research fields with a definite, discrete goal condition. They are ongoing research fields.
The discovery of extra-terrestrial life is a huge, discrete goal condition. Everyone will remember which team/country first discovers and demonstrates such life. Few will remember who confirmed it (i.e. who came second).
Fusion wasn't mentioned. Also, the existence of other discrete, world-changing goals does not mean that the discovery of life on other planets is not a discrete, world-changing goal.
A caller asked Professor Sara Seager about sending a probe with a balloon, and she likes that idea, and said that was what the Vega program previously did:
>The Vega program (Cyrillic: ВеГа) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union (who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle) and Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus and also flyby Halley's Comet.
A Russian caller mentioned a proposed Russian space mission to Venus called Venera-D:
>Venera-D (Russian: Венера-Д, pronounced [vʲɪˈnʲɛrə ˈdɛ]) is a proposed Russian space mission to Venus that would include an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2026 or 2031. The orbiter's prime objective is to perform observations with the use of a radar. The lander, based on the Venera design, would be capable of operating for a long duration (≈3 h) on the planet's surface. The "D" in Venera-D stands for "dolgozhivushaya," which means "long lasting" in Russian.
