V-ATOMICC or Venusian Atmospheric Interplanetary CubeSat Concept is a 6U CubeSat concept
mission designed and dedicated to finding significant evidence or lack thereof, of the compound
phosphine in the hospitable range of the Venusian atmosphere. This project was created in
response to the controversial article published in Nature Astronomy which showed a possible
detection of the spectral fingerprint of phosphine by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and
the James Clark Maxwell Telescope. Phosphine is composed of one phosphorus atom with three
connected hydrogen atoms. It is theorized that phosphine is a potential biosignature gas and
finding evidence of a significant concentration could mean the potential for life on Venus.
Utilizing a CubeSat concept to gather data up close will give us far more definitive results than
observations made from Earth and eliminate the current controversy.
Authors
First Name
Last Name
Andrew
Weeks
Samuel
Poisson
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Submission Details
Conference URC
Event Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (ISE)