A spacecraft bound for Mercury may be able to take crucial measurements that could help us confirm potential signs of life seen on Venus.

On 14 September, a team of researchers announced that they had found a gas called phosphine in Venus’s clouds , and no non-biological processes that we know about could make it in such large amounts. The BepiColombo spacecraft may be able to confirm that the phosphine is indeed there.

BepiColombo is a joint mission by the …