I'm curious: do we currently have bacteria that could survive in the atmosphere of Mars? My understanding is that it would require controlled conditions and monitoring to make bacterial growth feasible under those conditions.
Conditions that support Liquid water is only transitory there. So you’re generally correct.
Most extremophiles we’re aware of tend towards high temps or if low temps, in the context of extreme high salinity and water presence. Which don’t line up with Mars much.
We’d have to be managing the environment they grew in, which makes it hard.
The underlying issue of course being energy gradients and biochemical availability of that energy. Life ‘eats’ to survive, but if the only energy gradients are feeble and biochemically hard to access, it’s not a good environment for life as we know it.
