How do you make difference between life and non-life?

Poke it with a stick?
Actually, they nearly announced life on Mars, when they found a chemical reaction that fooled them into thinking they found life.
Whether it has the ability to procreate is probably part of the answer.

Motility, reproduction, transpiration, cell walls, nucleus.

From Wikipedia: ”Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have self-sustaining biological processes (“alive,” “living”), from those which do not”