Space: A New Way to Warm Mars

Introducing artificial particles into the Martian atmosphere could help warm it up and make it more habitable, a new study published Wednesday said.

Iron or aluminum foil to warm Mars. According to a scientific study published Wednesday, August 7, in the journal Science advancesIntroducing artificial molecules into the Red Planet’s atmosphere could make it capable of supporting life by bringing its temperature down to 28 degrees Celsius. Conditions that would melt the ice and allow microbial life to flourish, though the air would be so scarce that astronauts would be unable to breathe there anyway.

trap heat on the surface

A third of Mars’ surface is made up of water—rivers even flowed there 600,000 years ago—but it’s still too cold to support life. For years, scientists have tried to find a way to warm it up, but the proposed techniques have been too expensive and difficult to implement.

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Today, American researchers propose using iron or aluminum particles found on the surface of Mars to reflect light and trap escaping heat. This means there would be no need to bring in materials, making the process more feasible.

“A necessary first step”

“For Mars, warming is a necessary first step, as previous concepts have focused on releasing greenhouse gases, but this requires large amounts of scarce resources on Mars.”“It is a very interesting discovery,” explains Edwin Kite, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago. Sky News.

Once in the atmosphere, the particles will be much slower to settle to the ground than typical dust, meaning they will stay in the air longer. “It would still take millions of tons of particles to warm the planet, but that's 5,000 times less than previous proposals would require.”Edwin Kite, according to whom, “This greatly increases the feasibility of the project.”