This article was taken from the April 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Steve Squyres
Investigator, Nasa Mars Rover Project
"Only if we're lucky. The best candidates for harbouring life in our solar system are probably Mars and [Jupiter moon] Europa. Near-term Mars missions can only examine materials near the surface. Drilling deeper is more than a decade away. Europa's possible subsurface ocean is even harder to reach. Searching for life is going to require patience."
Jill Tarter
Director, Center for SETI Research
"There are two possibilities: microbial life on Mars or technological civilisations detected by various Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programmes. Remote searches for biosignatures on distant exoplanets are more than a decade away.
Searches for technosignatures [non-organic features such as constructions] could succeed tomorrow."
Christopher Carr
Research scientist, MIT
"Life on Mars, if it exists, may be made of DNA/RNA, carried between Mars and Earth by meteorite impacts billions of years ago. Sequencing DNA/RNA on Mars could provide a definitive answer to this question within a decade. If we don't find life in the top metre or two of the planet's subsurface, going deeper is a much more complicated option."
Natalie Batalha
Investigator, Nasa Kepler Mission
"The Kepler Mission is on the verge of finding Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone, so the day when astronomers can observe evidence of distant, living worlds is looming closer. Nasa is developing the technology to build the instruments now, and in the next decade I hope to see concrete plans for a mission that will fly them."
Giovanna Tinetti
Reader in astrophysics, UCL
"By 2022, the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory mission will have been launched. It is dedicated to studying the composition of planets with atmospheres similar to that of Earth. We will try to find signs of biogenic chemicals, such as ozone, rather than the presence of life. Ten years is a bit optimistic, but I would say we could see something in 15 years."
Malcolm Fridlund
ESA astrophysicist, COROT mission
"The true and flippant answer is your guess is as good as mine.
The serious answer is we have no idea whether life is abundant or unusual. I would say simple, unicellular life is relatively common while complex multicellular organisms are rare. If this is true, then I am certain we will find simple life in the next decade, because we certainly have the technology."
Mark Swain
Scientist, Nasa Jet Propulsion Lab
"I'm optimistic, because Earth indicates that life is robust and exists in a wide range of environments. I expect that within the next ten years we will have detailed evidence for the habitability of some, perhaps numerous, planets outside our solar system, but that we will not find decisive evidence for the presence of biotic processes."
Image: Astronomers 'Flip' Over Cartwheel Galaxy (Nasa, Chandra, 1/6/06) / <a rel="cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/">Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center</a> / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
