Rocket Lab and MIT are preparing a privately funded probe to plunge through Venus's clouds looking for organic chemistry linked to possible life. It will get only about five minutes to take measurements before descending into increasingly lethal conditions — and the entire mission has been estimated at under $10 million.

Rocket Lab and MIT are preparing a privately funded probe to plunge through Venus's clouds looking for organic chemistry linked to possible life. It will get only about five minutes to take measurements before descending into increasingly lethal conditions — and the entire mission has been estimated at under $10 million.

Rocket Lab’s planned Venus probe is built around an uncomfortable trade: the spacecraft can be small and comparatively inexpensive because it will ask one tightly defined question, at one place, for only a few minutes. The target is the middle cloud deck of Venus, where temperature and pressure are far less hostile than at the surface. A cone-shaped capsule would fall through that region while a laser instrument examined individual aerosol parti…