An expert at the Imperial College London is making a bold claim about what we're about to discover in 2017, and he's got reasons for thinking that way.

It’s been an incredible 2016 in terms of scientific discoveries in space, but an expert is claiming that 2017 could bring the granddaddy of them all: the discovery of alien life. Simon Foster, a physicist from the Imperial College London, said that there is a strong possibility that the Cassini space probe, which is orbiting Saturn and examining its many moons, may make the key discovery by the time it ends its mission in September 2017. Foster was quoted in the UK newspaper The Sun.

In particular, Cassini is swooping in on Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Europa, which have excellent conditions compared to the rest of the solar system and could potentially host some form of life. Obviously, this would be microbial life, rather than some advanced species.

Of course, scientists have had many false alarms of alien life, and predicting a scientific discovery is nigh on impossible. But with more and more space probes out there taking a look at everything in our solar system, if extraterrestrial life exists here, 2017 could be the year we find it.

“This past year marked record-breaking progress in our exploration objectives,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a recent statement. “We advanced the capabilities we’ll need to travel farther into the solar system while increasing observations of our home and the universe, learning more about how to continuously live and work in space, and, of course, inspiring the next generation of leaders to take up our Journey to Mars and make their own discoveries.”