everything remains to be discovered, including alien life

Space has become in a few decades a laboratory at the service of the Earth, firstly thanks to satellites: telecommunications, geolocation, weather, pollution monitoring, etc. Then the space field, it is also a chance to advance medicine, explained Thomas Pesquet, just like the science of materials, engines, energy.

It is also better to understand where we come from and where we are going. This allows us to better understand the origin of our solar system because it allows us to locate us as humans in the universe. All astronauts say it: seeing the Earth from above allows you to become aware of its uniqueness and its fragility. “There are as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on the surface of the Earth, explains the editorial director of the journal Sky and Space Alain Cirou, there may be, in our galaxy alone, 300 billion stars and potentially between 60 and 40 billion planets that could look like ours, “ for the moment the Earth remains one of a kind. We are both tiny and unique.

Science says that research, in the next 10 to 20 years, will be crucial to answering the question of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Because with the new generations of telescopes – like the James Webb telescope, which is to be launched in December 2021 – we should not only better understand the big bang but also know if something is breathing on the few thousand planets closest to Earth. We should be able, through the light captured, the presence of different gases around these planets, to deduce the existence or not of a biological activity and therefore of life. The field of potential discoveries is dizzying.

All these questions are at the heart of the Explor’espace festival which starts on Friday 5 November and for three days in Montrouge, near Paris.