Humanity is on the verge of discovering extraterrestrial life, NASA senior scientists say.
"I think that we will have strong evidence of life outside the Earth over the next ten years, and I also think that we will have final evidence over the next 20-30 years," said NASA Head on Tuesday (April 7) Ellen Stofan.
“We know where to look. We know how it will look,” added Stofan. "We have modern technologies, and we are on the way to implement them. I believe that we are on the right path."
Former astronaut John Grunsfeld, who is an Assistant Administrator at NASA's Science Flight Department, shares Stophan’s optimism, predicting that signs of life will be detected in a relatively short timeframe in our own solar system and beyond.
"I believe that we will find one population of alien life in our solar system, either on an icy satellite or on Mars, and one population on an exoplanet orbiting a nearby star," said Grunsfeld during a conference on Tuesday. "The latest discoveries show that the Solar System and our Milky Way galaxy are literally teeming with conditions that make life possible in the form in which we know it," added Grunsfeld.
For example, life can be found in the liquid ocean, located under the ice crust of the moons of Saturn in Europe and Ganymede, as well as on the satellite of Saturn Enceladus. In the distant past, the oceans covered most of Mars and the seasonal dark streaks currently observed on the surface of the Red Planet could be caused by saline running water.
In addition, NASA's Curiosity rover found carbon-containing organic molecules and nitrogen — the main components necessary for life, both on Earth and on the surface of Mars.
Observations of the NASA Kepler space telescope have shown that almost every star in the sky contains at least one exoplanet, and many of these worlds can be habitable. In fact, telescope data shows that rocky worlds, such as Earth and Mars, are probably more prevalent throughout the galaxy than gas giants, such as Saturn and Jupiter.
“The solar system also has water, like the entire galaxy,” said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics department. “The Milky Way is a pretty“ raw place ”,” said Hertz during a conference on Tuesday. "We see water in the interstellar clouds that make up the planetary and star systems. We see water in the debris disks, which are going to become planetary systems around other stars, and we can even see water evaporating from comets in other star systems."
Hunting for evidence of extraterrestrial life is much more complex than simply defining potentially suitable living conditions. But researchers are already working in this direction.
For example, the next NASA Mars rover, scheduled to be sent in 2020, will look for signs of past biological life. NASA is also seeking to send a manned spacecraft to Mars in the 2030s. In addition, the agency plans to send a mission to Europe, which by the way can be launched as early as 2022. The main purpose of this mission is to shed light on the potential suitability for life on an icy satellite.
