Mars One is a project in which humans will be sent to Mars to develop a permanent settlement and colonize a completely new planet, essentially transforming it into another Earth. Is this possible? Let's discuss.

What are the conditions on Mars today?

• Temperatures reach -60 degrees Celsius
• It has un-breathable air composed of 95.97% Carbon Dioxide
• It receives deadly doses of radiation due to not having an atmosphere

If you put 2 and 2 together, humans simply cannot live there; but could we use technology to change the conditions to terraform it? Terraforming is simply the Science of transforming a planet to support human life. What must need to be done to be able to achieve this?

Terraforming Mars into Earth 2.0

Mars would need an Earth like atmosphere

The history of Mars

Roughly 4 billion years ago, Mars had many similarities to Earth. It had an atmosphere and its soil absorbed Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen. Active volcanoes then put them back into the atmosphere so the cycle repeated. Asteroids hitting Mars also kept it nice and warm. It also had a magnetic field which protected the atmosphere from being stripped away from the Sun's radiation.

Eventually the planet cooled and its magnetic field died down, volcanoes stopped erupting and asteroid collision rate went down. One thing that did not change is the martian soil continued to absorb the contents of the atmosphere, and solar winds stripped away what was left leaving Mars in the state we see it today.

How can we produce it a new atmosphere?

In simple terms, we must induce a massive Global Warming effect. Technology can be used to extract Carbon, Fluorine and Sulfur in its soil, convert them into greenhouse gases and pump them into the air.

Figure 1: A picture of Mars' south pole. Image shows dry ice which is frozen Carbon Dioxide

These greenhouse gases begin to trap heat from the sun, slowly warming up the south pole of Mars causing the sublimation of this dry ice. Sublimation is converting a solid directly into a gas. The result of this would help trap more heat from the Sun, which again, releases more greenhouse gases.

While this sounds like great news, it would take a long time. Besides that, these machines would need a lot of resources which are not readily available.

In that case, what else can we do?

Humans can build a machine which is effectively a huge mirror that they can put into Mars' orbit, which reflects sunlight onto its ice cap which would cause sublimation of this Carbon Dioxide, releasing it into the air.

Another way would be bombarding the planet with asteroids. Asteroids on the edge of the solar system can be captured and rocket engines can be used to propel them into Mars. There comes a problem with doing this though. This problem is that the power of this asteroid would be like a 70,000 megaton Hydrogen bomb striking its surface. This means if we were to do this, we must do it before humans land on the planet.

Now that we have an atmosphere, is that it?

Having just an atmosphere is not enough. This atmosphere would need an ozone layer to absorb some of the sun's Ultraviolet radiation which is dangerous to humans in high doses. To solve this, organisms can be introduced which release oxygen as a by-product eventually forming an ozone layer.

But what about Nitrogen? We would need to release Nitrogen to achieve an Earth like atmosphere. Bacteria could be used to extract trapped Nitrogen in the soil into the air or again, by using Asteroids.

Do we have an Earth 2.0?

Not quite. How would Mars hold on to this newly created atmosphere without a magnetic field. A magnetic field is needed to fend off solar winds from stripping it away. This is the biggest problem humans will encounter when attempting to terraform the planet. In fact, we don't quite know how to do that yet. On Earth, its core is made up of liquid metals which cause the magnetic fields. If we knew how to melt Mars' core which is solid metal, not liquid, it would bring back this magnetic field.

Mission would then certainly be accomplished. Bringing in water and plants would finish the job and it would only be a matter of time before humans would colonize what would now be known as Earth 2.0.

This video will help fill in some gaps in this article!

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Until next time, take care. Mystifact