Are we Alone In The Universe?

NASA Is there life under the icy crust of Europa?

We know this happened on Earth, but we'd dearly like to discover a second example where even the earliest stages of life might exist. Mars remains the best place to look. Three years ago, American scientists announced evidence for fossil 'bugs' on a meteorite that had come from Mars. This claim, hyped up at a press conference attended by President Clinton himself, was dubious and premature -- NASA has been backtracking on it ever since. We'll learn more from a series of space probes that will be sent to Mars in the next decade, to study its surface, and eventually return samples to Earth. And there are longer-term plans to search elsewhere -- for instance, a submersible robot will probe the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moons Europa and Callisto.

All this depends on the space programme. For most of the present century, space travel was a futuristic concept, familiar from comics and corn flakes packets. But in July 1969, Neil Armstrong's 'one small step' made space travel a reality. Those of us who are now middle-aged can remember viewing 'live' the murky TV pictures of that event: it seemed a high point in a decade blighted by the arms race and the Vietnam war.

Another lasting image from the 1960s was the first photograph of the entire round Earth, taken from the Moon. Our habitat of land, oceans and clouds was revealed as a thin delicate-seeming glaze. Our home planet -- the 'third rock from the Sun' -- is very special. The beauty and vulnerability of 'spaceship Earth' contrasts with the stark and sterile moonscape on which the astronauts left their footprints.

NASA Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind was fuelled by the Cold War.

In the 1960s, the first brief excursions to the Moon seemed just a beginning. We imagined follow-up projects: a permanent 'lunar base', rather like the one at the South Pole; or even huge 'space hotels' orbiting the Earth. Manned expeditions to Mars seemed a natural next step. But none of these has happened. The year 2001 will not resemble Arthur C. Clarke's depiction, any more than 1984 (fortunately) resembled Orwell's.