The decreasing cost of planetary missions has been one result of the commercial space launch revolution. Public-private collaborations, such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme,
where NASA collaborated with small firms to launch probes to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis moon-exploration mission,
have been made possible by launch technologies like the SpaceX Falcon 9. These missions cost a tiny fraction of what earlier NASA-only flights did.
Venus is a reasonably safe location to be, 50 kilometres above its fiery surface and above the sulfuric acid clouds. The temperature is fairly near to Earth's average, as is the atmospheric pressure.
Recently, researchers believed they had found phosphine in Venus' upper atmosphere. Only bacteria can produce the gas phosphate in nature.
The discovery led to suspicion that bacteria encased in water droplets are 50 kilometres above Venus's surface.