• Question: If ESA, NASA and the Chinese Space Agency were to try and terraform Mars, how long do you think it would take before Mars had a breathable atmosphere?

    Asked by JAMIES to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 12 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      I think it would take many years. There are some nice science fictions books written on the topic. The Mars trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars looks at what it takes to terraform Mars, and its quite considerable.
      We’re slowly changing the climate on Earth, more my accident than design, you’d have to do something similar on Mars but on a much bigger scale.

    • Photo: Jane MacArthur

      Jane MacArthur answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      I don’t think it is viable with current technology to make the Martian atmosphere breathable for humans today, even if everyone collaborated with massive budget avaliable. It is not only the problem of creating oxygen (which will be tested with the NASA Mars2020 mission), but the atmosphere is very thin and escapes easily as martian gravity is only 1/3rd of the Earth’s gravity. This means that molecules like nitrogen and oxygen just escape on Mars and leave the thick heavy carbon dioxide atmosphere which is poisonous to us.
      However, if the Mars2020 mission is successful then being able to make oxygen on Mars is key to have oxygen tanks for a colony and oxygen to make propellant in order to return from Mars. Terraforming the whole atmosphere is a much more complicated step though.

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