Cool. It would still take a lifetime to reach it, so visiting it would require building a spaceship capable of supporting a whole colony of people, but at least it's doable.

I read a few days ago about organic compounds found on Mars, and it suddenly occurs to me that the WORST thing that could happen is if we found good evidence of life. Here's why....

We know there aren't any jackalopes on Mars, so the BEST we could hope for is some crummy microbes. Those are probably not going to be all that different from Earthican microbes: cell walls, chemical strings that act like DNA, organelles that process chemicals. Yes that would be cool, but look what it would stop us from doing.

Terraforming Mars.

If there is no indiginous life on Mars, we could start dumping all manner of organic gunk there and just see what sticks. Bacteria, lichen, mushrooms, moss, algae, extremophiles of all sorts, whole barges full of landfill and sewage, whatever. Whatever takes hold, we throw more of that at it along with some basic plants that can live in it. Then we're on our way to colonies.

But if there is even the least evidence of indiginous life, all that is off.