"Folks outside of the sci-fi bubble" rarely appdeciate much about non-monetary impacts of space. But discovering life - even alien life - would really shake up many big religions, which tend to assume we're special, unique creations. I'm sure religions would eventually evolve to accomodate the discovery in their belief systems, but it would get noticed by regular Joes and Janes.

Those come later, in the form of evolution. If we find the precursors alone, novel forms of single cell life still at that early stage, we can learn a whole lot about how multi-cellular life came about.

Doesn't really matter.