18 Case of the missing lightning

There are electrical pulses bursting through the heavy atmosphere, but the missions that have gone to Venus to find them have made it an even more confusing endeavour. Ground-based telescopes and space probes – including NASA’s Cassini, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Akatsuki missions – have had nothing more than some subtle hints about the presence of Venusian lightning. Researchers believe it could still be present, but it is just much more localised and more rare, which is why there has been no definitive evidence yet. Or it could be the case that there isn’t lightning at all.