NASA experts believe that in order to still find an extraterrestrial civilization or a planet with signs of life, they will have to create a ship that could directly photograph planets outside our system. These do not exist at the moment, although several experimental projects of this type have been developed.
Of course, no one is going to force the events so far. NASA is now concerned about the James Webb Telescope Project, which was originally supposed to cost $ 1 billion and launched eleven years ago. As a result, the project took ten times more, and the launch will take place in two years at best.
At the moment, exoplanets are determined not directly, but by studying the nature of the behavior of stars. In order to take pictures of the planets directly, they want to use a coronagraph. This is a special tool that can even be attached to the telescope. It will suppress the glow of the star, making it possible to photograph the planet itself.
In any case, direct observation telescopes will cost NASA tens of billions of dollars, which no one will allocate to the agency now. Therefore, the ambitious goal of finding life outside the Earth is still only a dream for astronauts.
