> Life requires water to survive and grow, doesn't seem like you can have a living organism terraform Mars for you unless you've introduced a ton of water through other means.

This is the example I constantly refer to about how slow progress has been with probes and rovers, and why we really need feet on the ground. Mars is surprisingly relatively moist. The topsoil is about 2% water by mass! [1] To use the really confused metrics from the article - that's a liter of water per cubic foot of soil! The even more enticing thing is what's below? It's strongly suggestive that it may be even more moist below.

Back to the slowness - this was only discovered in 2013! It's one of the very few things that "The Martian" got accidentally wrong. The book was written before this discovery was made, and most people thought the soil was as barren and dry as it looks. It's not!

[1] - https://www.space.com/22949-mars-water-discovery-curiosity-r...