As per a research paper published in Nature Astronomy, our current technologies aren't advanced enough to achieve this monumental task.
For countless years, Mars has served as a hypothetical "Plan B", a beacon of hope should Earth, due to a natural or man-made disaster, become uninhabitable for humans. From the realm of sci-fi narratives to rigorous scientific exploration, the prospect of establishing life on Mars has always intrigued us.
Many concepts of Mars colonization fundamentally rely on terraforming - an imagined process of altering the planet's conditions to support Earth-like life, potentially eliminating the need for life support systems.
Regrettably, this recent research indicates that our current technological means are inadequate to terraform Mars. The study's authors, Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist and lead analyst for NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission (MAVEN), and Christopher Edwards, a Planetary Science Professor at Northern Arizona University, both agreed that our existing technology cannot support Mars' terraformation.
To successfully terraform Mars, we would need to significantly increase its temperature, make water stably exist in liquid form, and densify its atmosphere. Jakosky and Edwards suggest that we could theoretically use the greenhouse gases present on Mars to increase its temperature and modify its atmosphere to resemble Earth's.
They observed that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the only greenhouse gas present on Mars in an adequate amount to cause substantial warming. However, their calculations reveal that Mars lacks sufficient CO2 to make it Earth-like.
On Mars, CO2 is mostly found in rocks and in the polar ice caps. Jakosky and Edwards used data from the various rovers and orboters that have observed and studied Mars over the past 20 years to essentially conduct an inventory of the CO2 stored on the planet.
They documented all the identified CO2 reservoirs, surface and subsurface, and determined how much of the gas could be injected into the planet's atmosphere to change it. Their conclusion is that while a significant amount of CO2 exists on Mars, the amount accessible would be just enough to triple Mars' atmospheric pressure.
Tripling the density of the atmosphere would only achieve one-fiftieth of the CO2 needed to make the atmosphere habitable for Earth's creatures.
Moreover, the amount of accessible CO2 that the researchers found would increase the planet's temperature by less than 10 degrees Celsius, and since temperatures on Mars average minus 60 degrees Celsius, winter temperatures would be low enough that the CO2 would be re-precipitated into the atmosphere by condensing into ice on the surface, it would not, therefore, make a significant difference.
There are a number of suggested and theorized methods for humans to access Mars' CO2 and release it into the atmosphere, but many of them would be very difficult to accomplish and there would still not be enough CO2 to terraform the planet. Both Jakosky and Edwards said that perhaps new future technologies will find an alternative solution and make terraforming the red planet possible. However, "with current technology, we don't see viable options," Edwards told Space.com magazine.
One must also keep in mind the not minor problem of the magnetic field.
Mars does not have one, or rather Mars has many magnetic foci but none strong enough to safeguard the atmosphere from the solar wind. Without a magnetic field or adequate protection, the regenerated atmosphere would be inexorably eroded again by the Sun, as has been the case for some three billion years now. Several solutions have been suggested for this problem as well, all of which are difficult to implement and are beyond the direct topic of this article so we will examine them on another occasion.
Mars is an obvious choice when looking for a second home for humankind; it is the closest and easiest planet to reach and is the only planet in the solar system that has a climate that, however extreme, would allow us to step on its surface, move around and work, albeit protected by special shielded suits.
Mars can be said to represent the dream of many generations of science fiction fans, and when mankind dreams, sooner or later it has the audacity to try to realize its dreams.
Earth may have a doomed fate if mankind does not learn to respect it and choose in a short time to diminish the demographic pressure that is about to suffocate it. Mars may be, as Elon Musk claims and Stephen Hawking argued, humankind's only hope to preserve itself as a species and begin to spread its seed among the stars but, in the meantime, let us try to save the Earth because none of the celestial bodies that we may be able to reach in the near future will ever be able to guarantee the immense biological diversity of our planet.
Today we have to see a future colony on Mars not as a new Eden but as the beginning of a new world, a new home to build which we will have to learn to adapt to its environment, to live in large caves and caverns under the surface or huge shielded domes while waiting for adequate technology to terraform Mars.
For fans who would like to better understand what challenges the red planet would propose to humankind, we recommend watching the TV series "Mars" viewable at this link or on Netflix for those who subscribe to it.
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