We might be 1,000 years or more away from fully colonizing our own solar system before it’s worth a long, dangerous journey to another star.
And we tend to define life in a very terrestrially and DNA-specific way, despite we don't mention it explicitly.
My favorite are the pointless arguments about whether viruses are alive or not. As if "it's alive" is some objective property of a thing. It's not. It's a word we made up.
Maybe the Moon is conscious for all we know. We know almost nothing.
As for effective communication and interaction with aliens, it'll most likely require cybernetics and genetic engineering.
The idea humans will colonize the universe is very naive. We're Earthlings. We're extremely fragile outside very specific conditions on this very specific planet. To live successfully outside we'll have to change a lot.
Sure, technically whatever that ends up being we can still call "humans" but it won't look like humans do right now, that's for sure.
If aliens turn up, everyone will be too busy worrying about aliens to care about some prediction being wrong.
What I see is bunch of arbitrary capabilities, that we decided sum up to being life.
"the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death."
Technically if we decide to INTERPET this leniently, then phenomena like crystals and fire would qualify as life. So would viruses.
Yet, it also says "the condition that distinguishes from inorganic matter", and those are not "organic matter".
And what is organic matter? Well... that happens to be defined as carbon-based DNA/RNA coded proteins. That's QUITE specific to earthlings.