"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes."
It seems we have answered the $2.5 billion answer (the price tag of Curiosity). So, what's next? We know Mars had water and could have supported life. Unfortunately, Curiosity is not equipped to actually detect life itself, so we may need to wait for another mission to do that. It would be fascinating to learn that life existed on both Earth and Mars at the same time, or even that there is some relationship between life on each planet with one somehow seeding the other (or being jointly seeded in the same way, via a comet for example). You can learn more about this mission via a NASA broadcast of a March 12th press conference on the rock analysis.
One of the next questions that needs to be "Can Mars support life in the future?" We hear of government and private sector plans to visit the Red Planet, but nothing solid. While the science continues on the surface of Mars, let's hope the planning for a future manned visit continues on the surface of Earth. We have much to learn and much to do, but we need to keep that question in front of ourselves daily as we move forward with our exploration of space.
