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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. |