
The most active searches for otherworldly life in our solar system are centered around Mars, Earth’s cold planetary neighbor, and Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. In fact, NASA just launched the Europa Clipper on October 14, 2024 with the primary goal of searching for life. And in recent years, many people have floated the idea of sending astronauts to Mars. It was for missions like these that, in 2023, NASA postponed the would-be next exploratory trip to Venus — VERITAS — by allocating its funding to other exploratory programs which were exceeding their budgets…