By polluting Mars’ atmosphere like we do our own, can we thicken its atmosphere and basically create one like on Earth? If so we would raise the temperature enough to live on it, melt the ice for water, and be able to farm, providing oxygen through photosynthesis.
Scientists call it terraforming, the hypothetical process by which the climate, surface, and known properties of Mars would be deliberately changed with the goal of safe and sustainable colonization of large areas of the planet.
Mars is now too cold and too dry for life as we know it. The current Mars exploration, the rover Curiosity, has already hinted at the possibility of the planet’s past habitable environment. Trap heat and moisture with a thick atmosphere and Mars could be habitable again.
Importing ammonia, hydrocarbons, hydrogen and other atmosphere-enhancing compounds is doable. In short, we could build a livable planet with many of the elements that threaten our own.
Trail Mixers know that I’m just trying to find a way to create our ultimate fish camp.
How will we get there? By solar sailing of course.
In an unexpected reversal of fortune, NASA’s NanoSail-D spacecraft has unfurled a gleaming sheet of space-age fabric 650 km above Earth, becoming the first-ever solar sail to circle our planet. — Nasa Science News