can man alter mars environment essay 200 words

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Robin Wordsworth is one of the researchers studying how Mars may be made livable.

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A way to make Mars habitable

Leah Burrows

SEAS Communications

Silica aerogel could warm its surface the way greenhouse gases trap Earth’s heat

People have long dreamed of altering the Martian climate to make it livable for humans. Carl Sagan was the first outside the realm of science fiction to propose terraforming. In a 1971 paper, Sagan suggested that vaporizing the northern polar ice caps would result in “yield ~10 3 g cm -2  of atmosphere over the planet, higher global temperatures through the greenhouse effect, and a greatly increased likelihood of liquid water.”

Sagan’s work inspired other researchers and futurists to take seriously the idea of terraforming. The key question was: Are there enough greenhouse gases and water on Mars to increase its atmospheric pressure to Earth-like levels?

In 2018, a pair of NASA-funded researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Northern Arizona University found that processing all the sources available on Mars would only increase atmospheric pressure to about 7 percent that of Earth — far short of what is needed to make the planet habitable.

Terraforming Mars, it seemed, was an unfulfillable dream.

Now, researchers from Harvard University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and the University of Edinburgh have a new idea. Rather than trying to change the whole planet, what if you took a more targeted approach?

The researchers suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that would mimic Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect. Through modeling and experiments, the researchers show that a 2- to 3-centimeter-thick shield of silica aerogel could transmit enough visible light for photosynthesis, block hazardous ultraviolet radiation, and raise temperatures underneath permanently above the melting point of water, all without the need for any internal heat source.

The paper is published in Nature Astronomy .

Polar ice caps on Mars are a combination of water ice and frozen CO2. Like its gaseous form, frozen CO2 allows sunlight to penetrate while trapping heat. In the summer, this solid-state greenhouse effect creates pockets of warming under the ice, seen here as black dots.

Courtesy of SEAS

“This regional approach to making Mars habitable is much more achievable than global atmospheric modification,” said Robin Wordsworth, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Earth and Planetary Science. “Unlike the previous ideas to make Mars habitable, this is something that can be developed and tested systematically with materials and technology we already have.”

“Mars is the most habitable planet in our solar system besides Earth,” said Laura Kerber, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But it remains a hostile world for many kinds of life. A system for creating small islands of habitability would allow us to transform Mars in a controlled and scalable way.”

The researchers were inspired by a phenomenon that already occurs on Mars.

Unlike Earth’s polar ice caps, which are made of frozen water, the ones on Mars are a combination of water ice and frozen CO 2 . Like its gaseous form, frozen CO 2  allows sunlight to penetrate while trapping heat. In the summer, this solid-state greenhouse effect creates pockets of warming under the ice.

“We started thinking about this solid-state greenhouse effect and how it could be invoked for creating habitable environments on Mars in the future,” Wordsworth said. “We started thinking about what kinds of materials could minimize thermal conductivity but still transmit as much light as possible.”

The researchers landed on silica aerogel, one of the most insulating materials ever created.

Silica aerogels are 97 percent porous, meaning light moves through the material, but the interconnecting nanolayers of silicon dioxide block infrared radiation and greatly slow the conduction of heat. These aerogels are used in several engineering applications today, including on NASA’s Mars exploration rovers.

“If you’re going to enable life on the Martian surface, are you sure that there’s not life there already? If there is, how do we navigate that? The moment we decide to commit to having humans on Mars, these questions are inevitable.” Robin Wordsworth

“Silica aerogel is a promising material because its effect is passive,” said Kerber. “It wouldn’t require large amounts of energy or maintenance of moving parts to keep an area warm over long periods of time.”

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Using modeling and experiments that mimicked the Martian surface, the researchers demonstrated that a thin layer of silica aerogel would increase average temperatures of mid-latitudes on Mars to like those on Earth.

“Spread across a large enough area, you wouldn’t need any other technology or physics, you would just need a layer of this stuff on the surface and underneath you would have permanent liquid water,” said Wordsworth.

The material could be used to build habitation domes or even self-contained biospheres on Mars.

“There’s a whole host of fascinating engineering questions that emerge from this,” said Wordsworth.

Next, the team aims to test the material in Mars-like climates on Earth, such as the dry valleys of Antarctica or Chile.

Wordsworth points out that any discussion about making Mars habitable for humans and Earth life also raises important philosophical and ethical questions about planetary protection.

“If you’re going to enable life on the Martian surface, are you sure that there’s not life there already? If there is, how do we navigate that?” asked Wordsworth. “The moment we decide to commit to having humans on Mars, these questions are inevitable.”

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This Material May Make Human Habitation on Mars Possible

Silica aerogel traps heat and allows light in while blocking ultraviolet radiation, making it a good candidate for building human settlements

Jason Daley

Correspondent

Earlier this week, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said a crewed mission to Mars in 2033 is still in the realm of possibility, and the technological innovations needed to get to the red planet are moving ahead. Landing astronauts on Mars is just the first step; many people hope humans can establish a permanent settlement on the planet, and, eventually, colonize the world. But that would mean transforming the cold, dry, nearly airless planet into a habitable place for humans, a process that would be significantly more difficult than just getting to Mars. A new study, however, proposes using silica aerogel as a cheap way to warm up things up and make patches of the planet friendly to human life.

According to a Harvard press release , back in 1971, Carl Sagan floated the first plausible scenario for terraforming Mars, or transforming the planet into a place humans could live. By vaporizing the planet’s northern polar ice caps, he suggested, the water vapor and CO2 released into the atmosphere could create a greenhouse effect, raising temperatures enough for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet. But just last year, a study in Nature Astronomy found that even if humans used all the available CO2 available from water, minerals and the soil to spike the atmosphere, it would only produce an atmosphere with about 7 percent of the pressure of the atmosphere on Earth. So unless we have a technological breakthrough, humans won’t be terraforming Mars anytime soon.

Instead of trying to modify the whole planet at once, however, researchers at Harvard and NASA decided to look at whether it’s possible to modify smaller sections of the planet. “We wanted to think about something that's achievable on a decadal time scale rather than something that would be centuries in the future—or perhaps never, depending on human capabilities,” Harvard’s Robin Wordsworth, lead author of the study in Nature Astronomy , tells Mike Wall at Space.com .

Their solution was inspired by a phenomenon already found in the Martian polar ice caps. Made of water and CO2, researchers believe some sections of the ice act as a solid state greenhouse, allowing sunlight through and trapping heat underneath. The warm spots show up as dark smudges on the ice. “We started thinking about this solid-state greenhouse effect and how it could be invoked for creating habitable environments on Mars in the future,” Wordsworth says in the release. “We started thinking about what kind of materials could minimize thermal conductivity but still transmit as much light as possible.”

The team landed on silica aerogel, a 97 percent porous material that allows light through but is an insulator that slows the conduction of heat. Through modeling and experiments, they found that a layer of the gel, just 2 to 3 centimeters thick, would be enough to allow light through to power photosynthesis while blocking out hazardous ultraviolet radiation, and it could raise temperatures above the melting point of water.

By laying the stuff on the ground, humans on Mars could warm up the ground by 90 degrees, and the material could also be used to build domes, greenhouses or self-contained biospheres. “Spreading it over a larger area would make the solid-state greenhouse effect more efficient, as the proportional amount of heat emitted from the sides would be less, but you could still get substantial warming in a greenhouse,” Wordsworth tells Wall. “Whether you place the layer on or above the surface does not have a huge influence on the basic physics of the effect.”

The aerogel would perform almost anywhere on the planet between 45 degrees north latitude and 45 degrees south, though areas with subsurface water and a little wind to blow the dust off the dome would be best.

As opposed to terraforming, which would involve changing the entire planet, using the aerogel would be scalable and reversible. “The nice part is that the other ways you can think of to terraform a planet are so far out there,” coauthor Laura Kerber of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tells Ryan F. Mandelbaum at Gizmodo . By comparison, this looks like a practical solution.

It also addresses some of the thornier ethical questions that come with altering the environment of an entire planet. “If you’re going to enable life on the Martian surface, are you sure that there’s not life there already? If there is, how do we navigate that?” Wordsworth asks in the release. “The moment we decide to commit to having humans on Mars, these questions are inevitable.”

The next step is to test out the viability of the aerogel by deploying it on Earth in a dry, cold area like Antarctica or Chile. If it works, the material or at least equipment to produce it from Martian resources, may be in the cargo bay of some of the first flights to Mars.

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Jason Daley | | READ MORE

Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover , Popular Science , Outside , Men’s Journal , and other magazines.

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Can man alter Mars environment to make it more suitable for human habitation

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Planet Mars Research Focus

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TERRAFORMING: Engineering Planetary Environments

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It is possible in the future that Mars might be transformed into a habitable planet by a process of global environmental engineering known as terraforming. This paper provides a thumb-nail sketch of the terraforming concepts that have appeared in the technical literature, focussing on the steps required in order to render Mars fir for anaerobic life. Its intention is the provide a referenced guide of progress to date for any future researchers of the subject.

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The concept of modifying the environment of another planet, so that it can support terrestrial life, is known as terraforming. As a speculative scientific subject, it has been slowly gaining in respectability and, over the past 30 years, has amassed a considerable body of published work. In this paper, the present day capabilities of civilisation to bring about global environmental change are breifly discussed, followed by a review of the progress of research into the terraforming of the planet Mars. Whilst such an undertaking does not appear technologically impossible, whether it will actually happen is an unanswerable question. However, the control space for thought experimentation that terraforming provides is of use for both planetological research and education. The subject is therefore relevant to the present day, as well as to a possible future.

Aspects of currently understood planetology relevant to the possibility of terraforming Mars are reviewed. Evidence that Mars may have been naturally habitable in the past, for at least anaerobic life, is supportive of the feasibility of rendering the planet habitable in the future. The physical and the chemical state of the intrinsic resources needed for such a task and their whereabouts are less certain. However, what constraints can be placed provide a context in which superficially realistic terraforming models can be proposed. It is argued that the detailed knowledge needed in order to assess the ultimate realism of terraforming requires the presence of a permanently established population, exploring Mars as part of living there.

A two-stage terraforming scenario is outlined for Mars. The approach adopted differs from past methodology in two ways. It adopts a more conservative and plausible Martian volatile inventory. Possible planetary engineering solutions, including possible synergic use of terraforming techniques, are examined in detail. In the first stage, the Martian environment is modified to a state where it can support microbial and hardy plant life in approximately 200 years. While this step is conceptually similar to past scenarios, it differs greatly in detail. The second stage deals with the creation of conditions tolerable for human beings over a period of approximately 21,000 years. It is concluded that terraforming Mars is possible but not by the passive, or near-spontaneous, methods favored by some workers. A powerful industrial effort is required both on the planet's surface and in space as will be continuing technological intervention to stabilize the postterraformed regime.

Carl W Johnson

Man May Never Actually Survive the 18-month MicroGravity Trip of Even Getting to Mars Once on Mars, Cosmic Rays may double cancer risks Doctors have found that all Astronauts and Cosmonauts who have spent six months in space on Mir or ISS have discovered that the MicroGravity has caused their bones to lose from 16% to 30% of their strength and other physiology such as cardio-vascular and muscles and eyes to become degraded. A six-month stay in MicroGravity requires a follow-up period of one and a half years of Recovery on Earth. No one may be able to survive a three-times-longer 18-month MicroGravity trip to Mars, or to recover from it. The Astronauts who arrived on Mars may never recover enough there to be able to do any productive work on Mars. If some or all of the Astronauts find that their bones had degraded by 90% in getting to Mars, they may simply need an Advanced Hospital there! By around 2004, Doctors had already found that Cosmonauts and Astronauts who had spent six months on the Mir orbiting spacecraft and returned to Earth seemed to act somewhat disabled, as though they were very old people! A NASA article from 2004 is presented below which explained that healthy people on Earth constantly regrow bone tissues to replace old bone tissues which constantly break down. In an environment of MicroGravity, that re-growing of bone tissue apparently does not occur. Even by 2004, it was noted that Astronauts who returned to Earth after six-month assignments in the ISS seem destined to spend the remainder of their Earth lives as somewhat broken-down people whose bodies never fully recover. In 2017, a study at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has noted an additional medical problem in addition to the MicroGravity issue: Study: Collateral Damage from Cosmic Rays Increases Cancer Risk for Mars Astronauts New predictive model shows radiation from cosmic rays extends from damaged to otherwise healthy “bystander” cells, effectively doubling cancer risk. Former NASA scientist Francis Cucinotta is a professor for the department of health physics and diagnostic sciences within the School of Allied Health Sciences. (Aaron Mayes / UNLV Creative Services) The cancer risk for a human mission to Mars has effectively doubled following a UNLV study predicting a dramatic increase in the disease for astronauts traveling to the red planet or on long-term missions outside the protection of Earth’s magnetic field. The findings appeared in the May issue of Scientific Reports and were presented by UNLV scientist Francis Cucinotta, a leading scholar on radiation and space physics. Previous studies have shown the health risks from galactic cosmic ray exposure to astronauts include cancer, central nervous system effects, cataracts, circulatory diseases and acute radiation syndromes. Cosmic rays, such as iron and titanium atoms, heavily damage the cells they traverse because of their very high rates of ionization. Conventional risk models used by NASA and others assume DNA damage and mutation are the cause of radiation cancers. This is based on studies at high doses where all cells are traversed by heavy ions one or more times within much shorter-time periods than will occur during space missions. “Exploring Mars will require missions of 900 days or longer and includes more than one year in deep space where exposures to all energies of galactic cosmic ray heavy ions are unavoidable,” Cucinotta explained. “Current levels of radiation shielding would, at best, modestly decrease the exposure risks.” In these new findings, a non-targeted effect model – where cancer risk arises in bystander cells close to heavily damaged cells – is shown to lead to a two-fold or more increase in cancer risk compared to the conventional risk model for a Mars mission. “Galactic cosmic ray exposure can devastate a cell’s nucleus and cause mutations that can result in cancers,” Cucinotta explained. “We learned the damaged cells send signals to the surrounding, unaffected cells and likely modify the tissues’ microenvironments. Those signals seem to inspire the healthy cells to mutate, thereby causing additional tumors or cancers.” Cucinotta said the findings show a tremendous need for additional studies focused on cosmic ray exposures to tissues that dominate human cancer risks, and that these should begin prior to long-term space missions outside the Earth’s geomagnetic sphere. He also acknowledged the need to address a moral conundrum. "Waiving or increasing acceptable risk levels raises serious ethical flags, if the true nature of the risks are not sufficiently understood." News Center, UNLV, June 7, 2017 It appears that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us Earthbound people from Cosmic Rays. The Mir and ISS spacecraft have been close enough to the surface of the Earth to also be protected by the Magnetic field of the Earth. However, the excitement regarding proposed human colonies on Mars and on the Moon would not have such protection from Cosmic Rays. Even if humans survived the trip to Mars, and their bones had not become degraded by up to 90% by the 18-month trip in MicroGravity, and they are somehow still able to walk around on Mars, Mars does not have a protective Magnetic field as we have on Earth, and they may be extremely subject to cancer risks due to Cosmic Rays. These Cosmic Ray cancer dangers may also make any future Moon colony too dangerous to consider. Many sci-fi writers talk about people traveling to Mars in spaceships. People in NASA claim the same thing, and NASA and the government talk about spending many billions of dollars to soon (2030s) send manned rockets to Mars.

Lori Marino

This consists of a chapter from my book “Why We Must Go to Mars” and two unpublished papers. It examines the hypothesis that Mars was visited billions of years ago by aliens. They terraformed Mars by a series of oblique impacts aimed at the poles, these formed volcanoes on them including Tharsis, Olympus Mons, and Elysium Mons. The volcanoes outgassed thickening the atmosphere, they also sublimated the frozen atmosphere at the poles. The polar ice was also melted, this is traced in how it formed the Martian oceans. The rise of these volcanoes, particularly Tharsis, caused an imbalance of the planet inducing polar wander. The South Pole settled for a time a few hundred kilometres west of Hellas, the three main Martian faces (Cydonia Face, King Face, and Nefertiti) were on a great circle probably defining this former equator. Many possibly artificial formations follow this old equator. When the volcanoes cooled the atmosphere and oceans froze again at the poles, this moved them to the...

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At Home on Mars

By C. Claiborne Ray

• Dec. 10, 2012

Q. Could Mars be made suitable for human life by raising plants to produce oxygen?

A. Plants are indeed part of one theoretical plan for turning Mars into a suitable environment for human beings, a process called terraforming . Raising plants is not the initial step, but would come very late in the game, probably after centuries of climate change.

Chris McKay, a Mars expert at the NASA Ames Research Center, theorizes that engineers would first have to encourage the kind of global warming they want to avoid on Earth. This could be done by releasing greenhouse gases, like chlorofluorocarbons or perfluorocarbons, into the atmosphere. The goal would be to increase the surface temperature of Mars by a total of about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

The gases would be produced on the planet by processing chemicals from its atmosphere and soil in giant factories. Each factory would require as much power as would be produced by a large nuclear plant. With the rise in temperature, heat-trapping carbon dioxide would eventually be released from the planet’s south polar ice cap, producing a further average temperature rise of even greater magnitude, perhaps as much as 70 degrees Celsius, or 126 degrees Fahrenheit.

These high temperatures would melt ice to produce the water needed for living things. Only then would trees be planted to absorb carbon dioxide and produce enough oxygen for humans.

C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Can We Terraform Mars to Make It Earth-Like? Not Anytime Soon, Study Suggests

Could we make Mars Earth-like ? Not with existing technologies, one new paper suggests.

For many years, Mars has existed as a hopeful "Planet B" — a secondary option if Earth can no longer support us as a species. From science-fiction stories to scientific investigations, humans have considered the possibilities of living on Mars for a long time. A main staple of many Mars-colonization concepts is terraforming — 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.

Unfortunately, according to a new paper , with existing technologies, terraforming Mars is simply not possible. According to authors Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist and principal investigator for NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission studying the Martian atmosphere , and Christopher Edwards, an assistant professor of planetary science at Northern Arizona University, it just isn't possible to terraform Mars with current technologies. [ Shell-Worlds: How Humanity Could Terraform Small Planets (Infographic) ]

To successfully make Mars Earth-like, we would need to raise temperatures, have water stably remain in liquid form and thicken the atmosphere. In the paper, Jakosky and Edwards explained that, by using greenhouse gases already present on Mars, we could, theoretically, raise temperatures and change the atmosphere enough to make the planet Earth-like. The only greenhouse gas on the Red Planet that's abundant enough to provide significant warming is carbon dioxide (CO2), they noted. Unfortunately, they found, there just isn't enough CO2 on Mars to make the planet Earth-like.

On Mars, CO2 is present in rocks and the polar ice caps. Jakosky and Edwards used data from the various rovers and spacecraft observing and studying Mars from the past 20 years to essentially take an inventory of the planet's stored CO2. 

They documented all of Mars' surface and subsurface CO2 reservoirs and how much of the gas exists and could be put into the planet's atmosphere to change it. However, while there is significant CO2 on Mars, there is only enough accessible CO2 to triple Mars' atmospheric pressure, Jakosky and Edwards found. To successfully terraform Mars, the atmosphere would need to be raised enough so that humans could walk around without spacesuits. But although tripling the Red Planet's atmospheric pressure might sound like a lot, it's only one-fiftieth of the CO2 necessary to make the atmosphere habitable to Earth creatures.

Additionally, the amount of accessible CO2 the researchers found would raise the planet's temperature by less than 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). And because  temperatures on Mars average minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), with winter temperatures plummeting low enough for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into ice on the surface, it wouldn't make enough of a difference, the study authors said.

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Moreover, even if there were more CO2 on Mars, most of it would be very difficult to access, and it would take a lot of effort to release that gas into the planet's atmosphere, according to the paper. For example, CO2 could be released from the polar ice caps by detonating them directly with explosives — an option favored by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk  — or by using explosives to raise dust in the atmosphere so it would land on the polar caps and increase the amount of solar energy they absorb, according to the paper.

There are a number of suggested and theorized methods  for humans to access and release CO2 on Mars. But many of them would be very difficult, and as Jakosky and Edwards found, it still wouldn't be enough CO2 to terraform the planet. Both Jakosky and Edwards told Space.com that perhaps future technologies will find an alternative solution and make it possible to terraform the Red Planet. However, "with current technology, we just don't see that there are any viable options," Edwards said.

Mars has been the "obvious" terraforming choice for many years. This is due to a number of reasons, including that Mars is so close to Earth (relatively), it's the "easiest planet to get to, and it's the only planet that you can describe as having a climate where we could get down to the surface today and function there," Jakosky told Space.com. The allure of terraforming Mars is perhaps "part mythology as well. There's been a lot of science fiction written about Mars," Edwards added.

However, although future technologies may allow humanity to change Mars in ways not possible today, instead of focusing our efforts on making Mars into Earth 2.0, "I think our efforts are better spent making sure Earth keeps its pleasant clement environment," Jakosky said.

The paper was published today (July 30) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected]   or follow her @chelsea_gohd . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook   and Google+ . Original article on  Space.com . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Chelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined  Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea "Foxanne" Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter  @chelsea_gohd and @foxannemusic .

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Terraforming 101: How to Make Mars a Habitable Planet

| 25,387 views

Before we can journey to the stars, we must first go to Mars.

That’s Elon Musk’s philosophy, anyways – and just days ago he revealed new details on his ambitions to colonize the Red Planet, including sending two cargo rockets by 2022 and four rockets (two manned, two cargo) by 2024.

In 40 to 100 years, Musk suggested that up to a million people could live there.

Change of Seasons

As Elton John wisely noted, “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids”.

Indeed, the average temperature on Mars is −55 °C (−67 °F), dust storms are frequent and potentially deadly, and the planet has extremely low atmospheric pressure (about 1% of Earth). Because of the atmosphere and temperature swings, meaningful occurrences of liquid water on the planet’s surface are almost impossible. And while Mars is thought to have plenty of frozen water at its poles and in underground deposits, the logistics of tapping into these resources could be quite difficult.

In other words, for any meaningful and long-lasting human presence on Mars, we would likely want to alter the planet and its atmosphere to make it more habitable for human life. And while the exact mechanisms we would use to accomplish this are still up for debate, the basics behind what’s needed to achieve Earth-like conditions are actually pretty straightforward.

Terraforming 101

Today’s infographic comes to us from Futurism , and it details what might need to happen on Mars to make it more accommodating to human life.

Here are two steps we could take to get Mars into the “Goldilocks Zone”, where water is liquid – and harmful ionizing radiation like x-rays, UV rays, and gamma rays are not problematic.

Greenhouse Gases One way to ward off harmful ionizing radiation is to add a thicker layer of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere of Mars. Such an atmosphere would also allows less heat to escape, meaning warmer temperatures on the planet.

Magnetic Field A strong magnetic field on Earth is something else that makes life easier. Earth’s solid inner core, composed primarily of iron, creates this field when the planet spins – and it deflects cosmic rays and other harmful types of radiation.

One interesting solution to solve this problem on Mars would to have a magnetic field generator in front of the planet at all times, deflecting any such rays coming from the sun.

The Realm of Possibility

While terraforming is still a mixture of theory and science fiction at this point, we do know some of the major problems that have to be solved for attaining a habitable environment – and it will be interesting to see how plans around Mars develop as the prospect of colonization becomes more real.

You need to live in a dome initially but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on. … So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.

– Elon Musk

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Jatan Mehta • Apr 19, 2021

Can we make Mars Earth-like through terraforming?

Is terraforming mars possible with the technology we have today.

Mars was once an Earth-like world.

When life emerged on our watery planet sometime between 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, Mars was also home to lakes of liquid water and possibly flowing rivers . Combined with a thick atmosphere, a magnetic field to shield against radiation, and a variety of organic molecules , Mars had favorable conditions to form and support life as we know it.

Mars probably didn’t remain habitable for very long, though. The Red Planet lost its magnetic field sometime between 3 to 4 billion years ago, which allowed the solar wind––an incessant stream of energetic particles coming from the Sun––to strike and strip away most of the planet’s atmosphere and surface water, turning Mars into the chilly desert we see today.

Can we reverse nature’s effects and terraform Mars into a habitable planet again? Here’s what it could take.

Warming up the Red Planet

Mars’ atmosphere is far too thin and cold to support liquid water on its surface. With an atmospheric pressure just 0.6% of Earth’s, any surface water would quickly evaporate or freeze, just as NASA’s Phoenix lander saw in 2008 .

There are a few different schools of thought on how—or if—we could heat up Mars’ atmosphere and make it more hospitable to life. Elon Musk has suggested, for example, that we could terraform Mars by exploding nuclear bombs over its polar caps . He says that the radiation wouldn’t be an issue since the explosion would be in space over the poles, but the heat release would vaporize the frozen carbon dioxide to greenhouse warm the planet and melt the water ice.

Nuking Mars raises a host of scientific, ethical, and legal questions. From a scientific perspective, researchers estimate that the resulting melted water ice could easily cover the planet to a depth of a few tens of meters, but it probably wouldn’t last for long. The carbon dioxide added to Mars’ atmosphere by vaporizing the polar caps would only double the pressure , a far cry from the comparable pressure to Earth required for conditions warm enough to sustain surface liquid water and atmospheric water vapor.

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Mars has more abundant sources of carbon dioxide, such as those locked in the martial soil and tightly bonded carbon in minerals. But based on 20 years of NASA and ESA satellite data, researchers estimate that even if we mine Mars’ entire surface for carbon dioxide, the atmospheric pressure would still only be about 10-14% of Earth’s. This would correspond to an average temperature rise of about 10 degrees Celsius ––not nearly enough to sustain liquid water.

To put this all into perspective: we would need more carbon dioxide to meaningfully warm up Mars than humans have released throughout our entire history on Earth. Terraforming Mars is therefore a daunting endeavor that doesn’t seem possible with current technology.

With future technological advances, we might be able to excavate minerals deep in the Martian crust that may hold significantly more carbon dioxide and water . But the extent of these buried deposits isn’t currently known or evidenced by satellite data. We could also artificially introduce heat-trapping gases that are superior to carbon dioxide, like chlorofluorocarbons. These gases are short-lived, though, so the process would need to be repeated on a large scale to keep Mars warm.

Another idea is to import gases by redirecting comets and asteroids to hit Mars. However, this isn’t exactly practical, as it would require an inordinate amount of impacts to make any meaningful difference.

Breathing on Mars

Another challenge is making Mars’ atmosphere breathable. The MOXIE experiment on NASA’s Perseverance rover aims to convert carbon dioxide from Mars’ atmosphere into oxygen. If it works, future human explorers could use this kind of technology to generate oxygen for their habitats. However, doing this for the entire planet may not be feasible. This is why some researchers suggest turning to forms of life that have already transformed Earth’s atmosphere.

On Earth, cyanobacteria were responsible for converting, via photosynthesis, our atmosphere of methane, ammonia and other gases around 2.5 billion years ago into the oxygen-rich one of today. Since Mars receives less than half the sunlight as Earth—and has a global dust storm problem that makes visibility worse—researchers have suggested that we introduce special microorganisms on Mars that photosynthesize in low-light to create breathable air for humans. When paired with other organisms, an entire life cycle could be created on Mars with a favorable blend of gases.

On the International Space Station, researchers regularly test the ability of microorganisms to withstand non-Earth environments. In one such test, some microorganisms survived in a container with Mars-like conditions for 533 days, including some lichens, despite them being more complex life forms.

The main challenge of a microorganism-induced breathable Mars is time. NASA conducted a feasibility study in 1976 that concluded it would take at least a few thousand years for even extremophile organisms specifically adapted for the Martian environment to make a habitable atmosphere out of the Red Planet. The agency has since studied using microorganisms to produce oxygen for future human explorers.

Fixing the Achilles heel

Even if we somehow managed to introduce enough carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere—and sustained liquid water on the surface––the resulting Earth-like conditions would probably be short-lived.

NASA’s MAVEN mission has revealed that Mars is losing its atmosphere even today. The planet’s lack of a protective magnetic field means the solar wind will continue stripping its atmosphere and water, reverting our changes to Mars or constantly degrading them.

To truly terraform Mars, we would need to fix its magnetic field—or lack thereof. While we don’t have the technology to churn the core of a planet faster to revive its magnetic field, NASA’s Chief Scientist Dr. Jim Green and his colleagues have theorized that a magnetic field placed at point called L1 between the Sun and Mars, where their gravities roughly cancel out, could in theory encompass Mars and protect it from the solar wind.

After conducting extensive simulations which incorporated existing spacecraft data about solar wind behavior and the Martian atmosphere, Green and team say a magnetic field of 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss would sufficiently shield Mars against the solar wind. Green acknowledged that the idea sounds “fanciful” but noted that we can currently put a field of about 2,000 Gauss at the Sun-Mars L1 point. Undertaking such an endeavor is therefore not possible today.

If we stopped or limited Mars’ atmospheric loss, we could hypothetically pursue a number of warming methods. Over the next hundreds of years, we could restore as much as 1/7th the amount of liquid water as Mars once had in its oceans, and bring back some aspects of that period of habitability.

Even then, since Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity, it can only retain an atmosphere of about 0.38 bar. In other words, even a terraformed Mars would be very cold by Earth standards and its air about as thin and chilly as the Himalayan mountains.

In short, it seems very improbable that we could transform Mars into a more Earth-like planet. In the meantime, NASA’s multi-decade Mars program seeks to understand the planet’s suitability to host past or present life. Near-term Martian explorers would likely live in enclosed structures on the surface or subsurface , built using material from the Red Planet. For now, would-be terraformers will have to humbly hone their ideas on how to transform Mars into an open world.

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What Earth’s changing climate can teach us about altering the surface of Mars

Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, University of Birmingham

Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Birmingham provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

Nottingham Trent University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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In a rare instance of environmental success, the United Nations has just announced it believes the damage to the Earth’s protective ozone layer will be fully restored by the year 2050. This stands in stark contrast to the increasing alarm over the climate emergency , caused by an increasing greenhouse effect.

Both the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect ultimately help control how much ultra-violet (UV) radiation from the sun reaches the Earth’s surface, and how much infra-red (IR) radiation escapes to space. Both these forms of radiation have a critical impact on the habitability of a rocket planet.

Clearly controlling this radiation is a pressing issue on Earth. But it also presents a challenge for those who dream of colonising Mars.

Ultra-violet radiation is a form of light which has a wavelength ranging from 10 – 400 nanometers (1nm is 0.000000001 metres in length). This is shorter and more energetic than visible light. By contrast, the wavelength of a typical 4G phone network is a few tens of centimetres.

Solar-UV can drive the production of the essential Vitamin D in human skin, but excess levels can cause an array of health problems including sunburn, skin cancer and cataracts. It can also damage plants and harm crop production .

On Earth, almost all solar UV is absorbed by the ozone layer , a region of the Earth’s atmosphere extending from about 15–30km in altitude. Without it, life on Earth would be in a lot of trouble.

Ozone is a naturally occurring molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms. The formation of this molecule is carefully balanced by a process called the Chapman cycle , in which ultraviolet light breaks the ozone down into a single oxygen atom and an oxygen molecule. Natural factors can act as catalysts for this such as volcanic activity and the Earths radiation belts .

The first observations that the ozone balance was in trouble were made in the 1980s. It was determined that the widespread use and emission of certain chemicals like chloroflourocarbons had caused severe damage to the ozone layer.

This prompted the international community to adopt the Montreal Protocol in 1987 – so far the only UN agreement ever ratified by every member state.

IR radiation has a subtly different effect on Earth and other planets. All objects emit a range of light depending on their temperature . An object at an average temperature of a million degrees would primarily emit x-rays ( as some star systems do ).

The sun, at an average temperature of 5,700°C, emits most strongly in visible light (specifically in yellow), while objects at room temperature emit in IR. This is why people show up clearly in an infra-red camera.

Sunlight, primarily at visible wavelengths, passes through the atmosphere and warms the Earth’s surface. To maintain thermal equilibrium , the Earth then emits light back into space, but it does so in IR. Certain molecules in the atmosphere let a large amount of visible light pass through (which is why they are invisible to the human eye) but reflect back or scatter the IR light emitted by the surface – making the surface warmer.

The chemicals involved in this process are what we know as greenhouse gases, the most commonly known is carbon dioxide, but methane and nitrous oxide are also important. What complicates the climate issue is that water vapour and ozone itself are all greenhouse gases too.

This is one of the many factors that make climate modelling a very complex topic . The greenhouse effect itself is usually described as a bad thing, but it is actually essential to life. Without any greenhouse effect, it is relatively easy to show that the Earth would be at an average temperature of -24°C, instead of our current 14°C.

Like many natural processes though, human activity has modified the greenhouse effect such that this essential feature of our planet’s habitability is now becoming dangerous. We have ample evidence that humans have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and as a result, the global average temperature.

Lessons for colonisers

The challenge for future colonists hoping to live on Mars is quite the reverse of that on Earth. Its thin atmosphere means that even though there is a large concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect is quite weak and needs to be boosted. But a recent study has shown that even if the remaining carbon dioxide in rocks on Mars was vapourised and put into the atmosphere, there would not be enough of it to generate a sufficient greenhouse effect to make the planet warm enough to live on.

Compared with Earth, there is also very little ozone on Mars , and the thin Martian atmosphere allows much more solar-UV to reach the surface. So intense is this radiation that the top few centimetres of Martian soil are essentially sterilised once a day, with any complex molecules that might be useful for life being destroyed.

So what could we do to make the climate more similar to Earth’s? Previous ideas have included installing a giant magnet in space near Mars to protect the atmosphere and firing nuclear weapons at the surface.

A recent paper suggests we could use silica aerogel – a synthetic and ultralight material made by taking a gel and replacing the liquid component with a gas – to cover regions of the surface. This would in effect function as an artificial ozone layer, being almost transparent in visible light but blocking UV.

The use of silica aerogel would also rapidly heat up the ground underneath it to above the freezing point of water by way of an artificial greenhouse effect. Placing silica aerogel shields over ice-rich areas of the surface would generate an environment suitable for plant growth, with minimal human intervention.

This alone cannot terraform the red planet, as the Martian atmosphere is constantly being lost to the solar wind. However, it would at least provide a much less hostile environment, on a smaller scale, for future visitors. While still a difficult prospect, this is currently the most practical way of making areas of Mars a less extreme environment.

Ultimately, the success of the Montreal Protocol demonstrates both the viability of collective international action to solve an environmental problem, and that environmental modification is possible on a planetary scale in quite a short span of time. It also demonstrates clearly just how sensitive planetary environmental processes can be to artificial changes, for good or ill.

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Can We Terraform Mars?

What is terraforming, why is mars a good choice for terraforming, making mars habitable, how close are we to terraforming mars, ramifications of terraforming mars, ethical concerns.

Poles of Mars, like Earth, have a thick landmass of ice. Many experts including the SpaceX founder Elon Musk contest that nuking poles of Mars would release a good amount of CO2 presently trapped, into the atmosphere and also sublimate ice into water.

Science fiction literature is brimming with content about terraforming—the process of creating a habitable planet like Earth.  From The War of the Worlds by HG Wells to The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov, people have long been fascinated by this idea.

But now, terraforming is no longer confined to the fanciful thinking of science fiction writers. Even astronomers are seriously considering this idea as we continue to look towards the stars and our first human colony away from Earth.

So, what exactly is terraforming, and why might our neighbor, Mars, be a great place to try out this terraforming activity? Let’s find out!

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To put it simply, terraforming a planet or other celestial entity, means manipulating its atmosphere and other environmental characteristics so that the climate of that planet becomes habitable for lifeforms. The best option would be to alter the planetary climate, such that humans could dwell there even without a spacesuit.

Of the eight major planets in our solar system, Mars seems to be the best bet for terraforming. Why? Well, quite simply, Mercury and Venus are too hot for a spacecraft to survive, let alone humans. The Jovian planets—Jupiter onwards to Neptune—are gas planets, which means they don’t even have solid ground to put our feet on! Clearly, Mars seems to be a better choice.

Challenges Associated With Terraforming Mars

However, even terraforming Mars is replete with challenges. Mars has a very thin atmosphere and an average temperature of -63 o C. Moreover, the air pressure on Mars is not even 1% of what we have on Earth. That being said, the very first challenge we need to address is to warm up the planet and increase atmospheric pressure. We need to address these two challenges first, and only then we can think about other concerns, such as how to grow food or how to shield any inhabitants of Mars from cosmic radiation.

Mars Wasn’t Always Inhospitable

At this moment, Mars doesn’t seem very hospitable to life, but this wasn’t always the case. Scientists opine that Mars used to have a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on the planet. Water is another important element, along with breathable air, which we would need for survival on any terraformed planet. Sadly, the thick atmosphere of Mars was ripped away into outer space in the last few billion years, so whatever water was present froze or evaporated, rendering the planet hostile to life.

Also Read: Why Is Mars Called The “Dead Planet?”

Giant Orbital Mirrors

After filling Mars’s environment with a sufficient concentration of O 2 , we also need to make it warmer. As mentioned earlier, with an average temperature of -63 o C, it’s too cold to survive on the cold and red planet. Researchers working for NASA in 1993 proposed a way to warm up Mars. They suggested constructing giant orbital mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the surface. The idea was to redirect the sunlight by strategically placing giant orbital mirrors over and around Mars. Think of this method like the large mirrors used by Archimedes to destroy an enemy’s ships using the heat from sunlight. Researchers estimate that by using this strategy, even the frozen water (ice) on the planet would be melted, which would provide us with water—another crucial element (water) for our survival on a foreign planet.

Greenhouse Gases

Another way to warm the planet is by using greenhouse gases . Yes, those infamous gases that are causing global warming on our own planet. You see, “warming” is the keyword here. Greenhouse gases, due to their very nature, are great at trapping heat in the atmosphere and thereby elevating the temperature. And on Mars, this is exactly what we want. In other words, our villain on Earth could be our hero on Mars! Experts suggest that greenhouse gases would thicken the Martian atmosphere, raise the surface temperature, and also shield the planet from excess cosmic radiation.

CO 2 is the most common greenhouse gas on our planet, so the question becomes, is there enough CO 2 on Mars to thicken the atmosphere?

Nuking The Poles

The poles of Mars, like Earth, possess a thick landmass of ice. Many experts, including SpaceX founder Elon Musk, contest that nuking the poles of Mars would release a good amount of CO 2 that is presently trapped into the atmosphere, and also sublimate ice into water.

Martian Soil

Another good source for extracting CO 2 would be Martian soil, which is rich in carbon, but it’s tricky to unlock. The carbon-rich mineral on Mars’ surface would need to be heated up to a few thousand degrees before it released its CO2.

Mars’ surface area is around 144 million square kilometers, so we would need billions of tons of gas to fully envelop the red planet. The energy required to do so would be nearly inconceivable. It would mean constructing and running gigantic nuclear power plants on Mars for several decades in order to fill Mars with enough greenhouse gases to warm its surface temperature.

Another element that could play an important role in trapping heat on Mars is aerogel. Aerogel is one of the lightest materials known to humans. Aerogel is a super-low density solid, and is actually composed of 99% air! It is also a good insulator, which is why it’s being used in NASA’s current Mars Rovers mission.

Harvard researcher Robin Wordsworth, in a recently published paper, demonstrated how aerogels can be used on Mars. Wordsworth shined a lamp to mimic Martian sunlight falling on aerogel. By doing this, he was able to keep the surface below the aerogel warm, up to 65 o C. He argues that this type of aerogel cover on the red planet would help in trapping heat in Mars’ atmosphere.

Unfortunately, aerogel is not perfect. It is quite brittle, and producing it in large enough quantities would be extremely challenging.

Yes, there is another decidedly violent way to terraform Mars…. colliding comets !

Comets are a rich source of nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen—the elementary components required for an Earth-like atmosphere. If we could figure out a way to redirect comets and make them crash on the surface of Mars, a good amount of nitrogen and oxygen would be released into the Martian atmosphere.

Yet, some experts warn about the perils of doing this. They contest that bombarding Mars with comets would be devastating. Doing so would wipe out whatever evidence of life we haven’t discovered and would decimate the pristine geological record of the solar system, which we can no longer find on Earth.

Also Read: How Would Humans Protect Themselves On Mars?

The first step to terraforming Mars would be to land the first human (or group of humans) on Mars, just like we once landed on the Moon . However, even doing that is difficult, let alone conducting a mission to completely terraform the planet. Many years from now, if we continue on our current trajectory, we should be able to get this done, albeit with spacesuits.

Once we arrive on the planet, our next step would be to establish the first scientific outpost on the planet, to ensure that there is some level of sustainability on the foreign planet. The most challenging part would be to scale up the human presence from a handful of trained astronauts to thousands of space enthusiasts. We would definitely need manpower in the thousands to kickstart a full terraforming mission.

The people who would terraform Mars would be Martians . These Martians would also adapt generation after generation in the foreign environment. Given that the gravity on Mars is much lower, Martians are likely to become taller than us. They may develop new blood chemistry, given that the air pressure would be different. All in all, they are likely to diverge from us and become a new species as the process of evolution kicks in. The fact that pioneers and explorers would begin evolving into Martians would also be another point of discussion.

Although it looks unlikely that we will terraform Mars in the near future, assuming that we do, should we really embark on meddling with the planet’s natural environment? Should we really promote the idea of having a discretionary planet in our backyard? These are some ethical questions that would need a convincing answer.

Given the difficulty involved in manipulating Mars to our convenience, it would be much easier to simply keep Earth’s environment clean and conducive to life.

In summary, it’s unlikely that we will see human civilization successfully colonizing Mars in our lifetime. However, innovators and researchers are in pursuit of developing technology that may counter this presumption. Only time will tell how successful humanity will be in making its presence felt beyond Earth in this magnanimous Universe!

• Print Detailed Mars Facts - NASA's Mars Exploration Program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• ZUBRIN, R., & MCKAY, C. (1993, June 28). Technological requirements for terraforming Mars. 29th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
• Want to Colonize Mars? Aerogel Could Help. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Jakosky, B. M., & Edwards, C. S. (2018, July 30). Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars. Nature Astronomy. Springer Science and Business Media LLC.
• CAN MARS BE TERRAFORMED? B. M. Jakosky1 and C. S. .... The Universities Space Research Association

Hussain Kanchwala is an Electronic Engineer from University of Mumbai. He is a tech aficionado who loves to explicate on wide range of subjects from applied and interdisciplinary sciences like Engineering, Technology, FinTech, Pharmacy, Psychology and Economics.

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Essay on Life on Mars for Students and Children

500 words essay on life on mars.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun in our solar system. Also, it is the second smallest planet in our solar system. The possibility of life on mars has aroused the interest of scientists for many years. A major reason for this interest is due to the similarity and proximity of the planet to Earth. Mars certainly gives some indications of the possibility of life.

Possibilities of Life on Mars

In the past, Mars used to look quite similar to Earth. Billions of years ago, there were certainly similarities between Mars and Earth. Furthermore, scientists believe that Mars once had a huge ocean. This ocean, experts believe, covered more of the planet’s surface than Earth’s own oceans do so currently.

Moreover, Mars was much warmer in the past that it is currently. Most noteworthy, warm temperature and water are two major requirements for life to exist. So, there is a high probability that previously there was life on Mars.

Life on Earth can exist in the harshest of circumstances. Furthermore, life exists in the most extreme places on Earth. Moreover, life on Earth is available in the extremely hot and dry deserts. Also, life exists in the extremely cold Antarctica continent. Most noteworthy, this resilience of life gives plenty of hope about life on Mars.

There are some ingredients for life that already exist on Mars. Bio signatures refer to current and past life markers. Furthermore, scientists are scouring the surface for them. Moreover, there has been an emergence of a few promising leads. One notable example is the presence of methane in Mars’s atmosphere. Most noteworthy, scientists have no idea where the methane is coming from. Therefore, a possibility arises that methane presence is due to microbes existing deep below the planet’s surface.

One important point to note is that no scratching of Mars’s surface has taken place. Furthermore, a couple of inches of scratching has taken place until now. Scientists have undertaken analysis of small pinches of soil. There may also have been a failure to detect signs of life due to the use of faulty techniques. Most noteworthy, there may be “refugee life” deep below the planet’s surface.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Challenges to Life on Mars

First of all, almost all plants and animals cannot survive the conditions on the surface of Mars. This is due to the extremely harsh conditions on the surface of Mars.

Another major problem is the gravity of Mars. Most noteworthy, the gravity on Mars is 38% to that of Earth. Furthermore, low gravity can cause health problems like muscle loss and bone demineralization.

The climate of Mars poses another significant problem. The temperature at Mars is much colder than Earth. Most noteworthy, the mean surface temperatures of Mars range between −87 and −5 °C. Also, the coldest temperature on Earth has been −89.2 °C in Antarctica.

Mars suffers from a great scarcity of water. Most noteworthy, water discovered on Mars is less than that on Earth’s driest desert.

Other problems include the high penetration of harmful solar radiation due to the lack of ozone layer. Furthermore, global dust storms are common throughout Mars. Also, the soil of Mars is toxic due to the high concentration of chlorine.

To sum it up, life on Mars is a topic that has generated a lot of curiosity among scientists and experts. Furthermore, establishing life on Mars involves a lot of challenges. However, the hope and ambition for this purpose are well alive and present. Most noteworthy, humanity must make serious efforts for establishing life on Mars.

FAQs on Life on Mars

Q1 State any one possibility of life on Mars?

A1 One possibility of life on Mars is the resilience of life. Most noteworthy, life exists in the most extreme places on Earth.

Q2 State anyone challenge to life on Mars?

A2 One challenge to life on Mars is a great scarcity of water.

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