A revolutionary way to warm up Mars » Explorersweb

With NASA aiming to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, the race is on to make the planet more habitable. Scientists believe they have taken a first step. They have found a way to warm the Red Planet enough to support microbial life.

This isn’t the first study to propose a method to warm Mars, but it’s the most effective because it uses resources the planet already has. Other ideas rely on transporting materials from Earth or mining them on Mars, both of which would be incredibly difficult. This new method simply takes advantage of the abundant dust particles in the Martian atmosphere.

The average temperature on Mars is -62°C. By manipulating the dust particles, we could raise temperatures on the planet by over 20°C. That might not sound like much, but it would take Mars from frigidly sterile to merely cold – enough for microscopic life to survive.

Terraforming

Such terraforming of the planet would slowly change its atmosphere. As more plants grow and photosynthesize, more oxygen is released. A major obstacle to life on Mars is that we cannot breathe unaided. There simply isn’t enough oxygen. This would begin the process of change.

“This research … brings us one step closer to the long-held dream of establishing a sustainable human presence on Mars,” said Edwin Kite, co-author of the new study.

The Mars rovers have shown us that Mars’ dust is rich in iron and aluminum. Right now, the dust is actually cooling the planet slightly. But if the dust particles were modified to have a short, rod-like shape, they would trap heat and scatter sunlight, increasing the surface temperature.

If the artificially generated particles were released continuously into the atmosphere at a rate of 30 liters per second, the temperature increase of 20 °C would occur within months. However, such a release volume is difficult to implement; in practice, it could take decades before the atmosphere is significantly affected.