It’s Halloween, when we are on high alert for the unknown that prowls in the shadows. I still shiver when I think of a Halloween night, many harvest moons ago, when a ragged, blue-wigged stranger showed up to trick-or-treat. The creature communicated by grunts and stomps, terrified my sister Gail and me…and turned out to be our mother.

What other creatures lurk in the vastness of space, unfamiliar and perhaps terrifying (or not), but still part of our family which we call life? 

“Are we alone?”, arguably one of humankind’s oldest questions. As they looked at the heavens, the ancients imagined other worlds populated by gods and mortals. Friends or foe? Like us or unimaginable creatures? 

In 2019 we still ask this same question, but for the first time in human history, we can approach this scientifically. We know so much more about the diversity and inner workings of the tens of millions of species of creatures with whom we share planet Earth. To complement our knowledge about life and its existence in our terrestrial environment, we have conducted the grand experiment of sending life to other celestial bodies in the form of the NASA’s Apollo astronauts who have walked and lived on the moon, and soon to return with women for the Artemis program. But our robotic surrogates have journeyed far beyond, to conduct experiments for us in the atmosphere and on the surface of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our own solar system. NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft entered interstellar space on 25 August 2012. The Breakthrough Foundation Starshot program is contemplating a flyby to a nearby planet …in another solar system.