Is it possible to terraform Mars?

                                 Credit: Shutterstock / u3d

With its massive volcanoes , swirling dust storms, a never ending expanse of red Martian landscape and large, extravagant poles of sublimating dry ice, the astounding terrains of Mars have captured Human attention since long.

Over the past few years, there has been an enormous growth in science and technology which have resulted in many significant steps towards our journey of space exploration.

The past few years have witnessed many successful unmanned missions to the Martian surface. From the days of the Viking landers to NASA's Curiosity rover, Mars mission have seen huge success over the years.

But with the current concerns over climate change and changing environment on the Earth, is it be possible to see Mars as an alternative habitat for the Human species?

Is it possible to "terraform" the Red Planet?

What would it take to set up humanity's first interplanetary colonies in Mars?

Let's find out !

What is "Terraformation" ?

Terraformation is a hypothetical process of changing the conditions on a planet to make it habitable for life that exists on Earth, including humans, without a need for life-support systems.

     

An artist's impression on the stages of terraformation 
Credits : wikipedia

Seems logical, right? What could be a better way to settle on another planet than to convert the planet itself to an "Earth 2.0"?

Wait, not so soon!

Though several interesting techniques have been proposed to terraform Mars, scientists speculate that it may perhaps be "impossible" to terraform a planet with the present day technologies.

Aah, now, that's depressing!!

But wait, there's more to the story.

Focus on the emphasise on the term "present day technologies". While the present day technologies might not be efficient in terraforming Mars, scientists have always accepted the possibility of such a terraformation in the near future, perhaps within the next 100 years!

Now, you must really be wondering about the different ways to actually transform the Red Martian Planet into an Earth like world.

Don't worry, we got you covered!

But first, let's discover, what exact changes would we need to make to the Red planet to make it habitable?

Why would it take for Mars to be habitable ? 

Mars
Credits : wikipedia

• ‌The Martian atmosphere is toxic, 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and traces of other gases including oxygen totaling less than 0.4%. This, as we may expect, doesn't exactly contribute to its habitability. For humans to be able to breathe in the Martian surface, we would want an atmosphere of approximately a similar composition to that of Earth.

• ‌The atmospheric pressure on Mars is far below the Armstrong limit at which people can survive without pressure suits. If you step outside of your spacesuit in Mars today, you would die in less than 1 second, as the low pressure literally pulls the oxygen out of your blood. 

• ‌Thanks to the thin atmosphere, Mars climate is much colder than Earth, with mean surface temperatures between 186 and 268 K (−87 and −5 °C; −125 and 23 °F) (depending on the season and latitude). For life to survive in such conditions, a proper atmosphere needs to be formed. 

• ‌The surface gravity of Mars is 38% that of earth. Moreover, Due to the lack of a magnetosphere, solar particle events and cosmic rays can easily reach the Martian surface.  A proposed method to tackle this problem is to install a magnetic field generator a near martian orbit to protect it from the cosmic rays, much like a space Umbrella! 

So, ultimately, the basics to terraforming an alien terrain has to begin with the creation of a habitable atmosphere which would enable human survival.

But, if we could somehow thicken the Martian atmosphere by adding some mass to it, we might be able to kickstart a greenhouse effect, that, in theory, could solve all of our problems!

That, is the essence of terraformation.

Okay, now that we know what exactly we need to be doing to terraform Mars, let's explore some proposed techniques to it.

How exactly do we Terraform Mars? 

Although many techniques have been proposed to terraform the red planet, only a few have been speculated as might be actually viable in the coming future.

The coalition of NASA with SPACE X and many other private space organisations has opened furthur opportunities to make the terraformation a reality in the near future.

• ‌Releasing the Carbon-dioxide reserves of the planet. 

   

In terms of an easy baby step to terraforming, releasing the planets relatively easily available reserves of Carbon-dioxide might be an obvious step.

The huge dry ice poles of Mars has large reserves of Carbon-dioxide in it . Much as Elon Musk said, probably "nuking" Mars' poles would lead to enough emissions of carbon - dioxide required to kick-start the greenhouse effect and to thicken its atmosphere.

Poles of Mars
Credits : ESA Science and Technology 

Even though it seems easy, the backside to this technique is that there is probably not enough Carbon-dioxide in the poles to bring about the required atmosphere. Another source of Carbon-dioxide could be the minerals in the crust. So, we would need to strip mine the entire planet's surface to mobilise the Carbon-dioxide required. That would require a humongous amount of enery which is non - viable with the modern day technology.

• ‌Setting up factories releasing greenhouse gases like the CFCs. 

Another possible technique to an artificial greenhouse effect might be to create large factories releasing super greenhouse gases like CFCs as some present in the earth.

But we would need to set up hundreds if not thousands of factories to create enough of the gases to affect the climate. And then, we would need to add our custom cocktail of gases to the so formed atmosphere to be able to breathe and survive without a space suit.

Credits : wordpress

While this may seem impossible with the present technology, it may indeed be possible in the near future.

Keeping all these constraints in mind, is it possible to somehow import (or maybe i should say "hijack") the required amount of gases the Martian atmosphere? This brings us to our third technique!

• ‌Hijacking building bloack of atmosphere from comets  :

This is probably the most interesting and the craziest way to terraform Mars! Comets are known to be the storehouse of gases and various resouces in our atmosphere. So if we could somehow direct thousands or maybe millions of smaller sized comets to the surface of mars, that could indeed solve the problem!

             

            A graphical representation showing rockets guiding an asteriod  

                                                      Credits : seeker

To achieve this we would need an army of nuclear powered self guiding robots which would direct the comets in the kuiper belt to collide with the Martian surface, eventually leading to its terraformation. Just that, it is probably of a technique of the far future and not currently viable with present day technology.

Conclusion :

While all this might seem like a scene from a science fiction movie, it would probably be possible in the near to medium future.

Who knows, perhaps terraforming might become a commonly used practice to expand our intergalactic territory if someday humanity becomes a type -3 civilisation on the Kardasev scale!

Could the people born in recent times be lucky enough to have seen colonies being set up on Mars? Or maybe to go a vacation to Mars?

Endless are the possibilities!

Perhaps, Humanity was never meant to remain confined to the Earth!

The universe is probably waiting for us!!