Astronauts: There Must Be Life in Space

May 12, 2008 -- The human race will find life elsewhere in the universe as it pushes ahead with space exploration, astronauts back from the latest U.S. space mission said Monday.

"If we push back boundaries far enough, I'm sure eventually we'll find something out there," said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour, which returned to Earth in March.

"Maybe not as evolved as we are, but it's hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe," he told a news conference in Tokyo.

The crew members on the 16-day Endeavour mission, which included a Japanese astronaut, said that so far they have not seen anything inexplicable or mysterious in terms of other life forms.

"I personally believe that we are going to find something that we can't explain," said another astronaut, Gregory Johnson.

"There is probably something out there but I've never seen it," he said.

Dominic Gorie, the crew commander and veteran of four space flights, pointed out that explorers in past eras did not know what they would find before setting off across the ocean.

"As we travel in the space, we don't know what we'll find. That's the beauty of what we do. I hope that someday we'll find what we don't understand."

But it could take a while before human beings come into contact with extraterrestrial life, Richard Linnehan, a fellow mission specialist and believer in the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, told the news conference.