The Mars Perseverance Rover, launched in July of 2020 successfully touched down on Mars on February 18, 2021. Part of NASA's flagship multi-billion-dollar Mars 2020 mission, the rover will be accompanied by the Mars Helicopter. Together these expensive tools are designed to assess early habitability of the planet and seek out evidence of ancient life with the ultimate goal of seeking out the origins of life potentially on planets other than Earth. Bringing back informative samples collected by the rover, with a stated objective of further researching independent life on another planet, could cost yet another billion dollars.
Most scientists will agree that there is a finite probability that some form of life exists somewhere else in the universe. To this end, humanity has spent decades of manpower and billions of taxpayer dollars seeking out evidence of extra-terrestrial life and even attempting rudimentary communication. The 1972 and 1973 Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts respectively, now hurtling to the edges of our solar system, both included gold-anodized aluminum plaques designed to explain who we are to anyone that happened upon them. For the same reason, the interstellar spacecrafts, Voyagers 1 and 2, both carry 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph records that display identifying information about our species and images and sounds of our society encoding within them.