The search for life in the solar system involves following the water and looking for the building blocks of life. In the next decade, we could possibly find evidence of past life on Mars, which had an atmosphere and a wonderful gravity level, making it a good candidate for carbon-based life.
Despite 50 years of exploring Mars with robots and gathering great data, the planet still remains a difficult and distant exploration that requires the collaboration of both humans and machines to accelerate the process.
The speaker believes that the existence of building blocks of life and the discovery of earth-like exoplanets make the possibility of life in the universe, including intelligent life, more compelling.