My husband is also a physicist, but he works for the Naval Research Laboratory on other space projects. In the next 20 years we should be going further out away from Earth in our pursuit of understanding of the universe. We should have many answers to the questions in our local environment and have advanced tecnology to the point where we can go farther. It is difficult if not impossible for me to predict where the breakthroughs will come because it depends on getting clever young people involved. I am very happy in my occupation and cannot see changing it.
Many physicist pursue their science all of their lives even after retirement.
I have other interests as well like cooking and gardening and travelling - I hope to be able to continue in all for quite some time. I think we will someday land on Mars but there are many techical and medical hurdles to pass first. My elder daughter has a number of chinese friends - she was interested in learning to speak with them. She enjoyed this so we have continued for nearly 3 years now. My younger daughter started about a year ago.