A report on humanity's imminent potential for living in space covers topics ranging from China's 2020 space station and the colonization of Mars to space-elevator innovations and the mapping of Earth-like exo-planets.

Astrobiology, the study of life in space, is one of today's fastest growing fields of science. In this accessible and elegantly reasoned book, scholar and researcher Impey explores the foundations of this rapidly developing discipline, where it's going, and what it's likely to find. If Earth is not the only planet, it is so far the only living one that we know of. Impey reveals the incredible proliferation and variety of life on Earth, paying special...