PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- NASA is on a mission to discover the secrets of life and how our planet formed in some very inhospitable climates. The government agency is calling 2015 the year of the icy world.
According to Bonnie Buratti, a senior research scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists believe life arises in the area of liquid water.
In 2007, NASA launched Dawn, a space probe used to study a protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. In March, the probe is expected to reach Ceres, which is believed to contain icy regions.
"They're small worlds that started to form, much like the earth formed. However, they were arrested at an early stage of their development, and so we go to explore them because they're like a time capsule of the earliest stages of our own Earth's formation," said Bob Mase, "Dawn" project manager.
The probe is using ion-propulsion to get to the planet and is traveling at 21 miles per second, which is 10 times faster than any previous technology.
Scientists said they got the idea from a "Star Trek" episode.
This summer, the time will come for new horizons to reach Pluto, after a 10-year, 3 billion mile journey. This will be the closest look ever at the small, icy planet.
In October, a spacecraft called Cassini is expected to go right over Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that has geysers of water.
"We've found very interesting ingredients in that water. There's organics and nitrogen, all the ingredients that you have to perhaps have life in that ocean," said Linda Spilker, a Cassini project manager.