Top 10 Upcoming Missions to Find Alien Life

Venus has long been neglected by space agencies, ever since we learned that the planet has an extremely hostile surface. But attitudes have changed in recent years as the idea that Venus’ atmosphere could harbour alien life picks up steam. A private American company, Rocket Lab, aims to send a laser-tunable mass spectrometer to study the Venusian cloud belt in 2023. The spectrometer will be launched aboard the company’s Photon satellite bus. While Venus’s surface is full of superheated carbon dioxide, the upper layer of the planet’s atmosphere is surprisingly temperate and could be home to extraterrestrial microbes. NASA is planning its own mission to study Venus’ atmosphere too, with DAVINCI+ planned to launch in 2029 or 2030.

While NASA is still developing this proposal, it seems extremely promising and likely to be greenlit. The Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (or LUVOIR) would be a space telescope so sensitive and powerful that it could study the atmosphere on Earth-sized exoplanets, and detect any biosignatures. Previously, this has been impossible because such planets are just too far away. The LUVOIR offers the chance to gaze at neighbouring solar systems with unprecedented detail. While it has to receive final approval, it has a good chance of going ahead. It has a proposed launch date of 2039 though, so don’t hold your breath.

Launched in July 2020, the Perseverance Rover and its robotic helicopter, Ingenuity, touched down on the Martian surface on February 18th, 2021. This means that Perseverance has already sent back plenty of exciting data and lots of fun selfies. But what Perseverance is actually looking for is biosignatures inside Martian rocks; evidence of alien astrobiology on the Red Planet. NASA also hopes to use Perseverance in a possible Mars-sample-return mission, although nothing has been greenlit as yet. The rover is caching rock and soil samples on the Martial surface for possible pick-up, should such a mission be approved. Then we’ll actually have Martian rocks on Earth, to study at our leisure.

This telescope has had a troubled development and was almost canceled numerous times, but it’s currently on track for a 2025 launch. It was previously known as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope and is another expensive telescope designed to pick up light beyond the visible threshold of the electromagnetic spectrum. Like other space telescopes, this one will be looking for exoplanets that might host alien life; but it’s also going to be searching for the cause of cosmic expansion. Only time will tell whether NASA has built an instrument that will actually unravel the mysteries of dark energy and the expanding universe, but we can’t wait to see what this telescope finds.

You might be wondering exactly how big a telescope has to be to literally get christened the “Extremely Large Telescope”: the answer is, well, extremely. The ELT will be able to receive more light than every other 8–10-metre class telescope on Earth combined, making it an astonishing engineering feat. It’s currently under construction in Chile and will be managed by the European Southern Observatory upon completion in 2025. Part of what’s exciting about the ELT is that it’s so sensitive it will be able to search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets. Once it’s built, it’s only a matter of time before we start learning the truth about the most intriguing exoplanets in the galaxy.

A joint effort by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, this rover will launch in 2022 and touch down on the Red Planet sometime in 2023. Like Perseverance, its mission is also to search for signs of past life on Mars. Formerly known as the ExoMars Rover, it was renamed after the British scientist Rosalind Franklin, who conducted pioneering work on DNA. Given this research, it would be pretty fitting if “Franklin” went on to uncover evidence of alien life in rover form. The vehicle will be armed with an impressive scientific payload that will allow it to look for both morphological and chemical subsurface life signatures. For the landing site, scientists are eyeing a clay-bearing plain named Oxia Planum, which was once rich in water.

Scheduled to blast off in October 2024, NASA’s Europa Clipper will arrive at Jupiter’s moon Europa in 2030 and perform 44 fly-bys. Scientists believe that Europa harbours a vast internal ocean, heated by tidal flexing. And where there’s liquid water, there’s the possibility of life! As it passes the moon, the Europa Clipper will investigate its habitability, studying the nature of the water locked beneath the ice and the composition of key compounds. It will also look out for a landing site for the proposed Europa Lander, which, if approved, will launch in 2027 and search directly for signs of life!

It’s been faced with delay after delay after delay, but one day – hopefully very soon – the James Webb Space Telescope will launch. It’s going to be one of the most impressive telescopes yet made, able to see infrared light; this means it will be able to physically see more than any other telescope. James Webb will be the true successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, able to produce incredible, detailed images of the cosmos. Infrared objects that Hubble was incapable of seeing – as are human eyes, for that matter – will be this telescope’s specialty. Being able to see across the electromagnetic light spectrum means it could be our best instrument yet for finding extraterrestrial life.

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer will be one of the most ambitious space missions ever undertaken. Set to launch in June 2022, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in 2029, and conduct flybys of the Galilean moons Europa and Callisto before settling into orbit about Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. All three are thought to have subsurface oceans that could potentially harbour life. While passing Europa, JUICE will search for the presence of organic molecules, complementing the Europa Clipper’s mission, with which it overlaps. Over Ganymede, it will evaluate the moon’s habitability, including its thin oxygen atmosphere and magnetic field. Could it be crawling with life on the surface? We’ll have to wait to find out.

We won’t see the launch of NASA’s Dragonfly until 2027, and it will only reach its destination in 2036; but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most exciting space missions in history. Saturn’s moon Titan has long been established as the most Earth-like and potentially habitable body in the solar system, and the Dragonfly robotic rotorcraft is going to help us know whether we should ever send humans there. The moon has a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, liquid hydrocarbon lakes and seas, and probably a subsurface ocean; its only downside is that being a moon of Saturn, it’s pretty cold. But if alien life is going to be anywhere, Titan is one of the likeliest locations.