Key ideas from David Grinspoon

• NASA's Da Vinci mission will be the first U.S. Venus mission since the 1980s, dropping instruments through sulfuric acid clouds to a surface with 900°F temperatures and crushing pressure
• The OSIRIS-REx mission found amino acids and sugars on asteroid Bennu, suggesting the building blocks of life were sprinkled throughout the early solar system
• Venus was considered a swamp planet until the 1960s when radio astronomy revealed its extreme greenhouse conditions - 'it wasn't until the first mission to Venus that these visions vanished'
• Percival Lowell's Martian canals were a mass delusion where other astronomers claimed to see the non-existent features, demonstrating scientists' susceptibility to bias
• Europa Clipper launched in 2024 will make 50 close passes of Jupiter's moon Europa in the early 2030s, outlasting current political administrations
• The controversial phosphine detection in Venus's atmosphere could indicate life thriving in the stable, permanent cloud deck at Earth-like temperatures and pressures
• Werner von Braun partnered with Disney and Chesley Bonestell in the 1950s to create space propaganda films, with original meetings held at the Hayden Planetarium