• Question: is it true we're terraforming mars

    Asked by bumblebee3004 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 13 Dec 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Winnard

      Andrew Winnard answered on 13 Dec 2015:

      Hi bumblebee!

      We are not terraforming Mars at the moment, so it is not true 🙂 It would be really difficult to terraform the whole of Mars and probably take a long time (like 100s of years). Here is a video that offers some ideas for how we could actually try to do it:

      Here is another video about how hard it would be to move to Mars right now:

      PS: The astro support team will start getting evicted this week from Tuesday! If you like my replies where I try to include videos for you then please vote for me – and check out the videos I made myself specially for you guys this weekend on my profile page! 🙂

    • Photo: Delma Childers

      Delma Childers answered on 14 Dec 2015:

      The only terraforming would be completely by accident and due to tiny microbial hitchhikers catching a ride on the many probes/rovers sent to Mars. Rovers are cleaned as well as possible, but it’s just not possible to be 100% free of microorganisms, so some do wind up on Mars. The odds are that the thin atmosphere and higher levels of radiation on Mars are more than these bacteria can handle and they die, but we don’t know for sure.

      And if there is life on Mars, perhaps in the seasonal water flows just under the surface (http://www.space.com/30673-water-flows-on-mars-discovery.html), we wouldn’t want to risk destroying it by terraforming the planet. 😉

      Great question!

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