We've discovered over a thousand extrasolar planets, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed. The problem is that we don't know anything about these planets. Sure, we know their size, their approximate mass, and how close they orbit their star, but that can only tell us so much. We need a more powerful and more dedicated space-based telescope in order to perform a comprehensive search of an exoplanet, which is the only way we'll be able to tell if there's life on it, or even if it's capable of supporting life. Again, we've found plenty of planets in the habitable zone of their stars, but we can't tell anything about them. This sounds like a job for the James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2018, and whose mission statement includes searching for exoplanets. Sounds great, right? We'll be finding life any time.
Turns out it probably won't be that easy. The JWST will be the biggest telescope ever put in space with a diameter of 6.5 meters. That's pretty big, but it's only big enough to survey in detail only the nearest exoplanets. We may get lucky and find something nearby, but odds are, we won't. To improve our odds, we need a telescope that's 10, maybe even 20 meters across, and the technology to get a telescope that big into space doesn't exist yet. It may take decades for us to launch a big enough telescope into orbit to find life out there in the galaxy, but every step we take is getting us closer to that ultimate goal.
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