Terraforming is the process of changing a planet’s climate to make it more Earth-like. On Mars, its first step should be to raise the temperature. And scientists already know how to do it quickly.
Opportunities for terraforming Mars
There are many plans to explore Mars in the coming decades with robotic and manned missions. Their ultimate goal is to determine if humans will ever be able to live there. This requires access to building materials, water, advanced manufacturing technologies, and closed-loop living systems with bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS). Basically, future settlers will need to create conditions that simulate Earth’s self-sustaining ecological systems – in fact, we need to “take Earth with us” to other planets.
In the long term, this effort could extend to the entire planet to make Mars “Earth-like.” This process is known as “terraforming” and many proposals have been made over the past 50 years.
In a recent study, an interdisciplinary team presented a new way to warm the atmosphere of Mars using nanoscale aerosols of graphene and aluminum. The results of the study indicate that Mars’ atmospheric dynamics and radiative processes make engineering aerosol heating possible, which could be the first step in terraforming the planet.
Three interrelated steps
Essentially speaking, the process of terraforming Mars consists of three interrelated phases. This essentially means that progress in one of these areas will lead to progress in others. And this is the way it is.
When the atmosphere heats up, the gases in it become denser, the atmospheric pressure increases and this causes the ice caps at the poles to begin to melt. Water vapor remains in the atmosphere and begins to act as a greenhouse gas.
Heating of Mars’ atmosphere
As the planet warms, the polar ice caps and permafrost will melt, releasing liquid water to the surface and water vapor into the atmosphere. Large amounts of dry ice in both ice caps sublimate, releasing additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and warming it even more. According to Robert Zubrin in his book “The Case for Mars”, this process would have resulted in an atmospheric pressure (atm) of about 300 millibars (30% of Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level). This would be enough for people to be outside without spacesuits, although they would still need warm clothing and oxygen.
Many suggestions have been offered to realize the first step, ranging from low albedo materials or plants distributed over polar caps (Sagan, 1973) to filling the atmosphere with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) (Lovelock/Alleby, 1984), ammonia, or methane. There have also been suggestions to add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by collecting it locally or importing it from another planet (Venus is a prime candidate). All of these proposals require significant resources and technological innovations that do not exist yet.
According to phys.org
