We tried to go into space for decades, but until 2000 our stay in orbit was usually temporary. However, after three astronauts moved to the International Space Station for a four-month stay, it marked the beginning of a decade of continued human presence in space.
After the trio of astronauts settled on the ISS on November 2, 2000, a NASA official noted:
“We are going to space forever. First, people will circle around this ball, and then we will fly to Mars."
Why fly to Mars at all? Images back in 1964 showed that Mars is a desolate, lifeless planet that seemingly has little to offer people. She has an extremely delicate atmosphere and no signs of life. However, Mars inspires some optimism about the continuation of the human race. There are more than seven billion people on Earth, and this number is constantly growing. Overpopulation or planetary catastrophe is possible, and they force us to look for new homes in our solar system. Mars has more to offer us than what the Curiosity rover shows. After all, there was water.
Why Mars?
Mars has long attracted people and captures the imagination. How many books and films have been created based on life on Mars and its development. Each story creates its own unique lifestyle that could settle on the red planet. What is it about Mars that makes it the subject of so many stories?
While Venus is said to be Earth's sister planet, the conditions on this fireball are extremely uninhabitable, although NASA has planned a visit to Venus with a passing excursion to Mars. On the other hand, Mars is closest to Earth. And despite the fact that today it is a cold and dry planet, it has all the elements suitable for life, such as:
Promotional video:
Water that is frozen as polar caps
Carbon and oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide
Nitrogen
There are striking similarities between the Martian atmosphere today and the atmosphere that was on Earth billions of years ago. When the Earth first formed, there was no oxygen on the planet, and it looked like an empty, uninhabitable planet. The atmosphere consisted entirely of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. And there was no oxygen until the photosynthetic bacteria that developed on Earth produced enough oxygen for the possible development of animals. Mars' thin atmosphere is composed almost entirely of carbon monoxide. This is the composition of the atmosphere of Mars:
95.3% carbon dioxide
2.7% nitrogen
1.6% argon
0.2% oxygen
In contrast, the earth's atmosphere is 78.1% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.1% carbon dioxide and other gases. As you might guess, any people who want to visit Mars tomorrow will have to carry enough oxygen and nitrogen with them to survive (we don't breathe pure oxygen). Still, the similarities between the atmospheres of early Earth and modern Mars have led some scientists to speculate that the same processes that converted most of the carbon dioxide on Earth into breathable oxygen could be replicated on Mars. This requires thickening the atmosphere and creating a greenhouse effect that will heat the planet and provide a suitable habitat for plants and animals.
The average surface temperature of Mars is minus 62.77 degrees Celsius, and ranges from plus 23.88 degrees to minus 73.33 Celsius. For comparison, the average temperature on Earth is 14.4 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, Mars has several features that make it possible to consider it as a future habitation, such as:
Orbital time - 24 hours 37 minutes (Earth: 23 hours 56 minutes)
Rotation axis tilt - 24 degrees (Earth: 23.5 degrees)
Gravitational attraction is a third of the earth's
The red planet is close enough to the sun to experience the seasons. Mars is about 50% farther from the Sun than Earth.
Other worlds that are considered as possible candidates for terraforming are Venus, Europa (Jupiter's moon), and Titan (Saturn's moon). However, Europa and Titan are too far from the Sun, and Venus is too close. In addition, the average temperature on the surface of Venus is 482.22 degrees Celsius. Mars, like Earth, stands alone in our solar system and can support life. Let's find out how scientists plan to transform the dry, cold landscape of Mars into a warm and habitable habitat.
Martian greenhouses
Terraforming Mars will be a huge process, if at all. The initial stages can take several decades or centuries. Terraforming the entire planet into an earth-like shape will take several thousand years. Some suggest tens of thousands of years. How do we transform a dry desert land into a lush environment in which humans, plants, and other animals can survive? Three methods are offered:
Large orbiting mirrors that will reflect sunlight and heat the surface of Mars
Greenhouse factories
Dumping asteroids full of ammonia onto the planet to increase gas levels
NASA is currently developing a solar sail engine that would place large reflective mirrors in space. They will be located several hundred thousand kilometers from Mars and will reflect sunlight onto a small section of the surface of Mars. The diameter of such a mirror should be about 250 kilometers. Such a thing will weigh about 200,000 tons, so it is better to assemble it in space, not on Earth.
If you point such a mirror at Mars, it can raise the temperature of a small area by several degrees. The key is to concentrate them on the polar caps to melt the ice and release carbon dioxide, which is believed to be trapped in the ice. Over the years, rising temperatures will release greenhouse gases like chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which you can find in your air conditioner or refrigerator.
Another option for the thickening of the atmosphere of Mars, and hence the increase in temperature on the planet, is the construction of factories that produce greenhouse gases, powered by solar panels. Humans are good at releasing tons of greenhouse gases into their own atmosphere, which some believe lead to global warming. The same thermal effect can play a good joke on Mars if hundreds of such factories are created. Their sole purpose will be to release chlorofluorocarbon, methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Factories for the production of greenhouse gases will either be sent to Mars or already established on the surface of the red planet, and this will take years. To transport these machines to Mars, they must be lightweight and efficient. Then greenhouse cars will mimic the natural process of photosynthesis of plants by inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. It will take many years, but gradually the atmosphere of Mars will be saturated with oxygen, thanks to which astronauts can only wear breathing apparatus, and not squeeze suits. Photosynthetic bacteria can be used instead of or in addition to these greenhouse machines.
There is also a more extreme method of landscaping Mars. Christopher Mackay and Robert Zurin have proposed bombarding Mars with large icy asteroids with ammonia to generate tons of greenhouse gases and water on the red planet. Nuclear-powered rockets should be tethered to asteroids from the outer part of our solar system.
They will move the asteroids at a speed of 4 km / s for ten years, and then turn off and allow an asteroid weighing ten billion tons to fall to Mars. The energy released during the fall is estimated at 130 million megawatts. This is enough to power the Earth for ten years.
If it was possible to smash an asteroid of this size against Mars, the energy of one collision would raise the temperature on the planet by 3 degrees Celsius. The sudden rise in temperature will melt about a trillion tons of water. Several such missions in fifty years could create the desired temperature climate and cover 25% of the planet's surface with water. However, the bombardment by asteroids that release energy equivalent to 70,000 megaton hydrogen bombs will delay human population for many centuries.
Although we may reach Mars in the next decade, terraforming will take thousands of years. It took the earth billions of years to develop into a planet where plants and animals can thrive. Converting the terrain of Mars to the terrestrial one is an extremely difficult project. It will be many centuries before the human ingenuity and labor of hundreds of thousands of people can breathe life into the cold and desolate red world.