Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck Plans 2023 Mission to Venus

Rocket Lab CEO, Peter Beck, has revealed that the company is planning an exploratory trip to Venus in 2023. The trip will utilise the company’s Electron Rocket and aims to collect data about the environment on Venus. Rocket Lab also has a more powerful rocket, the Neutron Rocket, under development. The company hopes that this larger rocket will eventually enable them to conduct deep space missions to Venus. Previously, the company has focused on putting satellites into orbit with aims to build an in-space infrastructure.

Venus Environmental Studies Could Hold Information About Climate Change on Earth

One exciting prospect about visiting Venus is that scientists now believe Venus once supported conditions for life and may have had a climate similar to Earth. Venus now has an average temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, too hot for existing data-collection robots to land on its surface. However, Rocket Lab’s CEO believes that Venus’s transformation from a habitable planet to an overheated ecosystem could provide clues about the future for Earth if global warming continues. During a 2020 Q & A session, Peter Beck stated that a Rocket Lab mission to Venus might provide information about the event which caused Venus to overheat.

Rocket Lab Mission to Look for Life on Distant Planet

Ambitious plans for a Rocket Lab mission to Venus also seek to explore the possibility of life on certain areas of the planet, where conditions are slightly more favourable. As an entity, Venus is relatively under-explored due to its inhospitable surface. Previous missions to Venus have included NASA’s Marina 2 and the Soviet probe Venera 3, putting Rocket Lab’s mission in good company.