More about extraterrestrial life

Europe is going to launch a new mission, December 21th, this year, to detect planets similar to earth in distant solar systems.

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"COROT could detect so many planets of this new type, together with plenty of the old type that astronomers will be able to make statistical studies of them," says Malcolm Fridlund, ESA's Project Scientist for COROT.
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http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=21299

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COROT relies on a new way of detecting planets. As tens of thousands of people witnessed on 8 June 2004, a planet moving across the face of the star creates a noticeable silhouette. On that day, onlookers watched the black dot of Venus slip across the Sun's bright surface.
COROT is designed to detect such transits of extrasolar planets across the faces of their parent stars.
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They also say:
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COROT will be the first extrasolar planet search mission capable of seeing the smaller, rocky worlds; although they will have to be in close orbits around their stars. COROT also opens the way for the future. Two years later, in October 2008, NASA will launch Kepler, a space telescope with a 0.95 metre mirror. Kepler works the same way as COROT, looking for planetary transits, and is expected to find the first Earth-sized planets in similar orbits to our world.
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Cool, ah! :)