Nasa beefs up its team of 'alien hunters' - and says we may be on the verge of finding extraterrestrial life
- Alien search team, dubbed Nexss, includes scientists from 10 universities
- Public could help with 'unprecedented' search by accessing data online
- Comes weeks after Nasa said we will find aliens in the next 10 to 20 years
- But the likelihood that life is similar to that on Earth is low, Nasa claims
Nasa claims we'll find aliens in the next 10 to 20 years – and now the agency is revving up its efforts to track them down.
The group has put together a team of 'extraterrestrial experts' to see if any of the planets discovered outside our solar system are habitable.
And it says that amateur astronomers could help with its 'unprecedented' search for ET by accessing research data online.
Scroll down for video
The Nexss team, includes those who study Earth as a life-bearing planet (lower right), those researching the diversity of solar system planets (left), and those on the new frontier, discovering worlds orbiting other stars in the galaxy (upper right)
The initiative, dubbed Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (Nexss), will include scientists from 10 universities including Stanford, the University of California and Yale.
The study of exoplanets is a relatively new field, and began with the discovery of the first exoplanet around a star like our sun in 1995.
Since the launch of the Kepler space telescope six years ago, more than 1,000 exoplanets have been found, with thousands of additional candidates waiting to be confirmed.
Nasa has set up a website for the public called Planet Hunters which allows anyone to search the data gathered by Kepler, which launched six years ago.
Scientists are also developing new ways to confirm the habitability of these worlds and search for biosignatures, or signs of life.
During a talk last month, Nasa said humanity will encounter extra-terrestrials within a decade. 'I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years,' said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for Nasa, (pictured) at a Washington panel discussion
By applying a 'system science' approach, the team hopes to understand an alien planet's biology interacts with the atmosphere, geology, oceans, and interior of a planet.
The announcement comes just weeks after Nasa's top scientist predicted we could be on the verge of finding life on one of them.
During a talk in Washington last month, the space agency announced that humanity is likely to encounter extra-terrestrials within a decade.
'I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years,' Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for Nasa, said.
'We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology.'
Jeffery Newmark, interim director of heliophysics at the agency, added: 'It's definitely not an if, it's a when.'
'We are not talking about little green men,'
The announcement was prompted by the recent discovery of water by Nasa in surprising places.
Jim Green, director of planetary science at Nasa, noted that a recent study of the Martian atmosphere found 50
Scientists using the Hubble recently provided powerful evidence that Jupiter's moon Ganymede (pictured) has a saltwater, sub-surface ocean, likely sandwiched between two layers of ice
The same study found that water had been present on the red planet for up to 1.2 billion year.
'We think that long period of time is necessary for life to get more complex,'
Nasa associate administrator John
'Once we get beyond Mars, which formed from the same stuff as Earth, the likelihood that life is similar to what we find on this planet is very low,' he said.
'I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star.
At the same conference last year, Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden made a more conservative estimate.
He claimed that we will find life within the next 20 years - with a high chance it will be outside our solar system.
Nasa next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and bring samples for a possible return to Earth for analysis.
Nasa also hopes to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s, which
'I'm a field geologist; I go out and break open rocks and look for fossils,'
'So I have a bias that it's eventually going to take humans on the surface of Mars — field geologists, astrobiologists, chemists — actually out there looking for that good evidence of life that we can bring back to Earth for all the scientists to argue about.'
The space agency is also planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022. It hopes to find out whether the icy moon is habitable.
Meanwhile, the agency's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will launch in 2018 to scope out the atmospheres of nearby 'super-Earth' alien planets.
New Horizons took this image of the icy moon Europa rising above Jupiter's cloud tops. The space agency is planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022, to find out whether the moon is habitable
- And then there were two: Baby meets mom's identical twin...
- A man feels something scratching in his ear and finds THIS
- Oklahoma DJ bitten by a snake after he steps on it while...
- Baby sucks on another baby's cheek hoping to get some milk
- Husband's priceless reaction to wife's pregnancy surprise
- Teacher showed students before and after boob job photos
- Passenger films 'out of control' turbulence in first class...
- Brutal footage shows ISIS prisoner digging his own grave
- Opposing groups of protesters gather outside Phoenix mosque
- Aerial footage shows protestors outside Phoenix mosque
- Worrying moment passenger holds broken plane window...
- The remarkable moment Rebekah sees brother's donated face
- Fury in Phoenix: Armed anti-Islam 'activists' clash with...
- 'Kim Kardashian can't eat burgers and Heidi Klum is no...
- Cannes through the ages: Stunning archive photographs of...
- What a difference a day makes! Beatrice goes from medieval...
- 'I am very happy in my love life': Star golfer Rory McIlroy...
- Joe Biden's son Beau dies aged 46 after battle with brain...
- Motorcyclist using mobile phone smashes into car... but...
- New mom is horrified to discover a photo of her...
- Texas flooding brings tide of more than ONE THOUSAND SNAKES...
- Paris set to remove hundreds of thousands of padlocks from...
- Hilarious moment 10-month-old baby boy meets his mom's twin...
- EXCLUSIVE: Goodbye, Washington D.C., hello Siloam Springs....