Astronauts: There Must Be Life in Space

"Unfortunately we are taking only baby steps in outer space efforts and we left our planet barely a few hundred miles above the atmosphere," he said.

The latest hitch-free Endeavour mission went to the International Space Station, carrying part of Japan's first space laboratory along with a Canadian repair robot.

Foreman described the Japanese laboratory -- named "Kibo," or "hope" -- as smelling like a "new car."

Takao Doi, the Japanese astronaut on the Endeavour mission, agreed "life like us must exist" elsewhere in the universe.

The comments come after a surprisingly high-level debate in Japan about UFOs.

Nobutaka Machimura, the number two in government, said in December that he personally believed aliens existed, in an unusual rebuttal to a government statement that Japan had no knowledge of UFOs.

Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba went as far as to say that he was studying the legal ramifications of responding to an alien attack in light of Japan's post-World War II pacifist constitution.

Related Links:

Discovery News blog: Free Space

How Stuff Works: How Aliens Work

How Stuff Works: How SETI Works