In July 2014 a panel of scientists from NASA announced that they're convinced they will soon find life outside planet Earth. One NASA scientist said, "We believe we're very, very close in terms of technology and science to actually finding [another Earth-like planet] and … signs of life on another world." According to this panel, we will find extraterrestrial life within 20 years, going as far as to say that the estimate is a "conservative" one.

NASA outlined its plan to search for alien life and said it would launch the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite in 2017. The agency predicts that as many as 100 million worlds in the Milky Way galaxy may be home to alien life.

At the announcement, Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said, "Just imagine the moment when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realizes that its long loneliness in time and space may be over—the possibility we're no longer alone in the universe." NASA astronomer Kevin Hand seconded Mountain's opinion, saying that in the near future "we will find out we are not alone in the universe."

Possible Preaching Angles: Christians could endorse this search for life on other planets, but not to end our "long loneliness in time and space" or to "find out we are not alone in the universe."