The wild plan for the Mars terraform by stabbing the asteroids in it

Is often The case that the more the planets are studied and understood, the more distant the possibility of inhabiting them seems. MarsFor example, it is the closest celestial body to Earth in terms of distance, but data shows that its conditions are extremely hostile to life.

However, NASA has plans to send astronauts to the red planet and Elon Musk it is a Vocal supporter to establish a human presence there. In the short term, the decision to colonize Mars is to build special closed habitats. But in the long run, some have offered a more ambitious strategy. Space colonization enthusiasts offer melting Mars – that is, transforming the planet to acquire characteristics similar to those on Earth.

Scientists accept that every proposal to terracing Mars has been in decades, although calculations are already being carried out to evaluate how this Titanic process can work. Leshek Chekhovski, professor at the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has suggested How to transform the planet with rusty into a place where people can walk without rescue origin. To achieve this, the researcher suggests bombing him with asteroids from the distant achievements of the solar system.

Mars is a desert planet, devoid of oxygen and with such a thin atmosphere that it prevents the accumulation of liquid water on its surface. None of these characteristics will be changed if the lack of atmospheric pressure is first considered. If a person passes unprotected onto the Martian surface, he or she will not die of suffocation or freezing, but because their blood will boil almost immediately due to the lack of an atmosphere.

On Earth, the atmospheric pressure is due to the total mass of gases contained in its dense atmosphere. Here, at sea level, the pressure is equivalent to 101 325 pascals; On Mars, it barely reaches 600 pascals, less than 1 % of Earth’s pressure. So, in order to start terracing, scientists must first thicken the Martian atmosphere. Other major challenges will then be considered, such as extreme temperatures, protection against solar radiation and the presence of water in the next phases.

Every scientist who examines the terracing of Mars comes to the same conclusion: there is simply not enough material on the planet to change their atmosphere and any attempt to transport elements there is an unprecedented energy cost.

Chekhovski’s solution to this problem is to bomb the planet with asteroids. In his proposal, a large asteroid will be launched directly at Hellas Planitia, a huge impact crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. According to this theory, the impact of a significant asteroid containing elements, essential for the habitat of the planet, would lead to a heating of Mars, while leading to a thickening of its atmosphere.

But it can’t just be every asteroid – it must be one with abundant water and nitrogen. This immediately excludes something from the asteroid belt of the solar system located between Jupiter and Mars. More recently, every large scale will have to come from the Kuiper belt, the disk of material that surrounds the external solar system and is full of frozen objects and primary water.