exocast

We cover this month’s most exciting exoplanetary (and solar system) news:

• Andrew tells us about details of the proposed “Venus Life Finder” mission which would go beyond ESA & NASA’s selected Venus missions to directly sample for organic molecules in the temperate regions of Venus’ atmosphere using an interplanetary balloon!
• Hugh talks about how analysis of the multi-planet systems found by Kepler is still revealing new insights, in this case how chains of planets appear to have a defined outer edge.
• Hannah talks about the open-source atmospheric modelling software PICASO 3.0, and argues for the benefits of astronomers making their code open-source.