I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.

There are lots of ideas which extend the Copernican principle one step further. We went from the solar system to the galaxy to zillions of galaxies and now to realising even that isn't all there is.

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.

It is foolish to claim, as some do, that emigration into space offers a long-term escape from Earth's problems. Nowhere in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest.

We're in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven't explored it very well.

We're going to understand that there is life on other bodies in the solar system.