🔗 Terraforming of Mars

🔗 Technology 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

Terraforming of Mars is a procedure that would comprise of planetary engineering project or concurrent projects, with the goal of transforming the planet from one hostile to terrestrial life to one that can sustainably host humans and other lifeforms free of protection or mediation. The process would presumably involve the rehabilitation of the planet's extant climate, atmosphere, and surface through a variety of resource-intensive initiatives, and the installation of a novel ecological system or systems.

Justifications for choosing Mars over other potential terraforming targets include the presence of water and a geological history that suggests it once harbored a dense atmosphere similar to Earth’s. Hazards and difficulties include low gravity, low light levels relative to Earth’s, and the lack of a magnetic field.

Objections to the project include questions about its feasibility, general ethical concerns about terraforming, and the considerable cost that such an undertaking would involve. Reasons for terraforming the planet include allaying concerns about resource use and depletion on Earth and arguments that the altering and subsequent or concurrent settlement of other planets decreases the odds of humanity's extinction.

Disagreement exists about whether current technology could render the planet habitable.