People have been wondering if we can alter Mars’s climate to make it livable for humans, and we might be closer than ever to answering this question.
Mars, one of Earth’s two closest neighbors along with Venus, is the fourth planet from the Sun. You can easily spot it in the night sky as it shines as a bright red point.
Mars is dry, cold, and rocky, with a thin atmosphere and very low surface pressure. These factors make it difficult for the planet to support liquid water, as any surface water quickly evaporates or freezes.
However, Mars is not entirely without water. Billions of years ago, the planet’s warmer and denser atmosphere allowed water to flow, as evidenced by river channels, lake deposits, deltas, and water-altered rock, now frozen beneath the soil. A recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that vast amounts of water may be trapped 11.5 to 20 kilometers below the Martian surface.
This groundwater could potentially fill entire oceans and cover the planet to a depth of one to two kilometers.
“We haven’t found any evidence for life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life.”
– Michael Manga, the study’s lead author from the University of California (UC)
Understanding the planet’s water cycle is “critical” to comprehend the evolution of Mars’s climate, surface, and interior.
This discovery was made possible by data from NASA’s Insight lander, which was sent to Mars in 2018. During its four-year mission, Insight recorded invaluable information about the planet’s internal structure, detecting meteor impacts, quakes up to a magnitude of 5, and rumblings from volcanic areas. These seismic events produced waves that allowed geophysicists to probe Mars’s interior.
Using a mathematical model of rock physics, scientists concluded that the seismic data from Insight indicate a deep layer of fractured igneous rock saturated with liquid water.
However, this water is located in tiny cracks and pores in the middle of the Martian crust, which may limit its usefulness for supplying water to a future Mars colony.
Looking for Ways to Make Mars Inhabitable
Over the last several decades, many ways have been proposed to terraform Mars. In 1971, Carl Sagan suggested vaporizing the northern polar ice caps to increase the likelihood of liquid water on the planet significantly. However, NASA-funded research in 2018 found that processing all available sources on Mars would only raise its atmospheric pressure to about 7% of Earth’s, which is still insufficient to make the planet habitable.
While Mars has an abundance of carbon dioxide, mining would still only provide an atmospheric pressure of about 10-14% of Earth, leading to an average temperature increase of 10 degrees Celsius. Mars’ surface averages about -80 degrees Fahrenheit.
A few years ago, researchers from Harvard University suggested making the planet suitable for humans with silica aerogel, which is a lightweight and transparent solid to imitate the greenhouse effect of Earth’s atmosphere.
For this, the researchers proposed a shield of silica aerogel with two to three-centimeter thickness. This shield will transmit enough visible light to permanently increase the temperature above the water’s melting point, as well as block dangerous ultraviolet radiation and enable photosynthesis. All of this is achieved by trapping the heat in the soil without requiring any internal source of heat.
This research was inspired by the ice caps of Mars, which involve water ice and CO2 in a frozen form. Like CO2’s gaseous form, the frozen form allows sunlight to penetrate while trapping heat, creating pockets of warming under the ice in summer.
However, this method requires huge quantities of silica gels to be manufactured and then transported to Mars.
Water is not the only problem on Mars, though. The atmosphere needs to be made breathable for humans as well. NASA’s Perseverance rover is aiming to convert CO2 into oxygen, and since arriving on Mars in February 2021, this device has produced 4.3 ounces of oxygen.
Another Mars mission has revealed that the red planet continues to lose its atmosphere due to the lack of a protective magnetic field. With the solar wind constantly stripping away Mars’s atmosphere and water, the planet would need a magnetic field of 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss to shield itself effectively. Unfortunately, the technology required to create such a magnetic field doesn’t yet exist.
Terraforming Mars is clearly an exciting but difficult task that seems impossible with our current technology. However, researchers continue to explore new methods, and a groundbreaking study has found a new approach to making Mars friendlier to life.
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Using Mars Dust to Make it Suitable for Microbial Life
Published in Science Advances earlier this month, the study, conducted by researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Central Florida, pointed out that one-third of Mars’s surface has shallow-buried H2O but remains too cold for life.
To warm the planet, scientists have proposed strategies similar to those used on Earth, releasing material into the atmosphere to enhance the natural greenhouse effect.
However, this process needs a large number of ingredients that are simply not in enough quantity on the surface of Mars. The new study found that something readily available on Mars can instead be utilized.
The idea is to use engineered dust particles that can warm Mars by more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) to bring the planet’s temperatures up to levels that are suitable for microbial life.
Much like natural dust, these engineered dust particles can be swept high into the atmosphere, allowing delivery from the near-surface.
A big step towards making Mars habitable, this method, while involving decades, is over 5,000 times more efficient than previous ones to warm Mars. This logistically easier and cost-effective strategy allows us to modify the environment of the Red Planet by using resources that are available on Mars itself, so there is no need to mine rare planet resources or import them from Earth.
The study states that constantly releasing the dust at 30 liters per second would warm the entire planet by ≳30 kelvin, which means the ice would begin thawing. This shows that if the material can be made or delivered at scale on Mars, then the planet may finally be warmed to make it inhabitable. According to the study’s corresponding author, Edwin Kite, an associate professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago (UIC):
“This suggests that the barrier to warming Mars to allow liquid water is not as high as previously thought.”
This is just the beginning, though, as Mars’s thin air still won’t be breathable. However, making it habitable for microbes that could gradually bring oxygen to the atmosphere certainly lays down the groundwork.
A Step Closer to Sustainable Human Presence on Mars
The abundant dust on Mars, which is rich in aluminum and iron, can’t warm the planet all by itself. The size and composition of the dust are such that instead of warming the planet, it cools the surface slightly.
In the latest study, researchers hypothesized that if dust particles can be engineered with different shapes or compositions, it’s possible to trap heat more efficiently. So, researchers designed particles in the shape of short rods. These ~9 micrometer-long nanoparticles are the size of your commercially available glitter.
The nanorods are created to block thermal infrared and scatter sunlight to the surface effectively. These qualities enhance Mars’s natural greenhouse effect and warm the planet more than 5 × 103 times more effectively than the best gases. According to the lead author Samaneh Ansari, a graduate student at Northwestern University in Professor Hooman Mohseni’s group:
“How light interacts with sub-wavelength objects is fascinating. Importantly, engineering nanoparticles can lead to optical effects that far exceed what is conventionally expected from such small particles.”
If the particles are released into the atmosphere of Mars continuously, calculations suggest a temperature jump of over 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This warmer atmosphere could also be noticeable within months. To reverse the warming, the release of particles can be switched off, and the effect would be reversed, stopping within a few years.
There’s a lot more to be done, though, as co-author Mohseni believes, we can create nanoparticles that not only have higher efficiency but can even “dynamically change their optical properties.”
As Kite stated:
“You’d still need millions of tons to warm the planet, but that’s five thousand times less than you would need with previous proposals to globally warm Mars.”
This method would require 2 million tons of particles every year. Several factors are still unknown. For instance, scientists have yet to find just how fast the particles would run out of the atmosphere. Given that Mars has clouds and water, it’s possible that water would simply fall back as rain as the planet warms and water starts condensing around the particles.
“Climate feedbacks are really difficult to model accurately,” stated Kite, noting the need for more data from not just Mars but also Earth. “We’d need to proceed slowly and reversibly to ensure the effects work as intended,” he added.
It’s notable that the focus of the study has been to warm Mars to the level where it becomes suitable for microbial life and not to make it breathable for humans.
Still, this innovative terraforming idea marks a significant advancement in research, narrowing the gap between Mars’s current state of habitability and where we believe it could be. Moreover, it opens new avenues for exploration, and as Kite suggests, we may be “one step closer to the long-held dream of establishing a sustainable human presence on Mars.”
Companies Working on Mars Missions
Mars is attracting a lot of attention not just from researchers but also from corporations who are putting in the effort and capital to understand, explore, and make the planet habitable for humans. The likes of Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and Northrop Grumman have been involved in space exploration, Mars missions, working with NASA, or developing the infrastructure needed for a Mars colony. So, let’s take a look at a couple of prominent names in this field.
#1. SpaceX
Founded by Elon Musk, SpaceX is at the forefront of developing technologies to transport humans to Mars. For years, Musk has been sharing his plan to colonize Mars and utilizing his assets to fund these plans, as “establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars will require a lot of resources.” He believes “there’s high urgency to making life multi-planetary.”
Back in 2015, Musk shared his plans to make Mars inhabitable, which involved nuking it and creating two tiny pulsing suns over the poles to warm it. At SpaceX, employees are currently working on a Martian city plan, while their Starship spacecraft, along with its Super Heavy rocket, is designed for interplanetary travel, making the company a key player in any future Mars missions.
When it comes to SpaceX’s financials, the company is reported to have generated $55 mln in profit on $1.5 bln in revenue, as per a WSJ report. This came after $5.2 bln was reported in total expenses for 2022, while revenue doubled to $4.6 bln. Reportedly, not everyone invested in SpaceX knows the company’s loss or profits as “many SpaceX investors view their holdings as a long-term bet” and “aren’t concerned about seeing results.”
#2. Lockheed Martin
This defense giant has been involved in NASA’s Mars missions, including designing spacecraft and technologies for Mars colonization efforts. In 1965, Mariner 4, launched on a Lockheed Atlas-Agena D rocket, provided close-up images of Mars. The company later worked with NASA for the Mars-bound spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars Lander.
Lockheed also envisions sending humans to Mars in a decade through its Mars Base Camp. Under this concept, astronauts will be transported from Earth to a Mars-orbiting science laboratory to perform real-time scientific exploration to determine the ideal place to land humans on its surface.
This publicly listed company, with a market cap of $133.34 bln, has its shares currently trading at $559.42, up 23.43% year-to-date (YTD). Lockheed has an EPS (TTM) of 27.58 and a P/E (TTM) of 20.29 while paying a dividend yield of 2.25%.
For its second-quarter results, the company reported a 9% increase in net sales to $18.1 bln. As geopolitical tensions rise and war going on between Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, Lockheed is expecting its 2024 net sales to range from $70.5 bln to $71.5 bln. For the defense contractor, the F-35 remains its top priority while it sees potential orders for 300 F-16 jets from the Philippines, Turkey, and Thailand.
Conclusion
Science fiction has been all over the idea of terraforming Mars to support human civilization, and as the latest research shows, the idea may become a reality in the not-so-distant future.
Over the years, proposals have emerged to warm the planet, help it sustain liquid water, allow crops to grow, and allow humans to breathe. So far, it all remains just ideas and proposals. Still, with time, the feasibility of terraforming is rising significantly, and with that, the barriers to making Mars habitable are being reduced.
As we better understand the Red Planet and technology advances, self-sustaining environments will take form, eventually making a long-term human presence viable on Mars and creating new possibilities and opportunities for humans.
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