https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-did-life-begin1/

Is the existence of life on Earth a lucky fluke or an inevitable consequence of the laws of nature? Is it simple for life to emerge on a newly formed planet, or is it the virtually impossible product of a long series of unlikely events? Advances in fields as disparate as astronomy, planetary science and chemistry now hold promise that answers to such profound questions may be around the corner. If life turns out to have emerged multiple times in our galaxy, as scientists are hoping to discover, the path to it cannot be so hard. Moreover, if the route from chemistry to biology proves simple to traverse, the universe could be teeming with life.

The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has sparked a renaissance in origin-of-life studies. In a stunning surprise, almost all the newly discovered solar systems look very different from our own. Does that mean something about our own, very odd, system favors the emergence of life? Detecting signs of life on a planet orbiting a distant star is not going to be easy, but the technology for teasing out subtle “biosignatures” is developing so rapidly that with luck we may see distant life within one or two decades.