In 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz confirmed the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star, the discovery answered one question but ignited a far deeper one: if planets are everywhere, could life be as well. For decades, this remained speculation, until a new generation of instruments transformed astronomy into something far more intimate. Using the Hubble Space Telescope and later the far more powerful James Webb Space Telescope, scientists began analyzing the atmospheres of distant worlds by capturing the faint starlight filtering through them, decoding chemical fingerprints from across hundreds of light-years.