Well, let’s say we’re not bad but we haven’t been very successful either.

Many missions have been exploring and investigating the Martian environment for decades to determine how conducive of life it is or was. This includes orbiters ( = satellites revolving around the planet at different altitudes) and rovers (actually roaming and analysing the surface of Mars!).

Concerning exoplanets, many great telescopes are on the way and will provide better and better resolution for us to analyse these planets, their composition, their structure, and assess their potential habitability ( = Can live survive there?) and inhabitation ( = Is there actually life there? Have we detected it?). They can either be located on Earth (for example, a great location is Chile and the Atacama Array) or even better, in space (like the future James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2021).