It could take 1,000+ years of planetary engineering to make Mars habitable, but it’s not impossible. Here’s how we’d do it.

Terraforming Mars: A Practical Guide (Infographic)

Terraforming Mars: A Practical Guide

<h2>Around The World Tour</h2>
Since its launch into space in 1999, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) has been <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/nasa-released-aster-3d-satellite-images-2016-4" target="_blank">taking pictures of Earth</a>. In 16 years, ASTER has collected images covering nearly 99% of the Earth&#8217;s surface. Aboard the NASA <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/terra/index.html" target="_blank">Terra</a> spacecraft, it is owned separately by the Japanese, who never released the images to the public.
But now, the images are finally made public and can be viewed on the <a href="http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallerymap.asp" target="_blank">ASTER Gallery Map</a>. There are approximately 2.95 million archived satellite images, so it required a lot of sorting to find the best photos &#8211; and NASA takes some <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-releases-best-ever-image-titan-saturns-largest-moon/" target="_blank">beautiful photos</a>.
So, here is a handy catalogue of some of the best.
<figure style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://static6.techinsider.io/image/56fed14d52bcd044008ba5aa-1200/many-aster-images-look-like-they-were-colored-in-by-a-little-kid-including-this-one-of-the-andes-mountains-but-thats-because-it-has-an-infrared-camera-that-can-detect-changes-in-surface-temperatures-materials-and-elevation.jpg"><img style="width: 800px;" src="" alt="" width="1200" height="1107" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">SOURCE (for ALL images): NASA/GSFC/METI/Japan Space Systems/ASTER Science Team</figcaption></figure>
Appearing as if a child spilled melted crayon wax everywhere, this photo captured the Andes Mountains using an infrared camera that detected changes in surface temperature, materials, and elevation.
<img style="width: 800px;" src="" alt="" />
This ASTER image is the most popular in the gallery. It&#8217;s a photo of Manaus, Brazil, at the junctions between the Amazon River and the Rio Negro Rivers. The Rio Negro is the dark current seen flowing at the north portion of the river, and it gets its dark pigment from tannin.
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This is an image of the Ferdinand and Isabela islands that belong to the Galapagos Islands in the Colón Archipelago. The islands are made up of active volcanoes, which can be seen above.
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The Oresund Bridge spans 10 miles across the Oresund Strait connecting Sweden to Denmark. It&#8217;s a combined motorway and railway bridge that goes partially underwater. There&#8217;s a manmade island in the middle of the strait that helps make the trip.
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This side-by-side display shows the affects of the crippling drought in North Korea. The left image shows the amount of vegetation (in red) in 2002, compared to the bare fields marked in deep blue caused by the drought in 2015 (right image).
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Near the center of the Lighthouse Atoll is the Great Blue Hole. You can see its surrounding carbonate reef. It&#8217;s a World Heritage Site and Belize National Monument. Jacques Cousteau took the calypso on a journey into the hole in 1972 to examine the stalactites inside.
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This alluvial fan in China is formed from deposits of gravel, sand, and salt. It forms the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China&#8217;s XinJiang province. The blue nerves are small streams of actively flowing water.
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This view shows 400 bridges connecting 120 islands that make up Venice, Italy. The only traffic that moves through the city is by boat.
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On the west coast of Ecuador, south of Guayaquil, wetlands are being converted into shrimp farms. The top image shows 143 square kilometers of converted wetlands in 1991. The bottom image shows a staggering 243 square kilometers converted by 2001. 83% of the original wetlands are gone.
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The McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica sees very little snowfall. Scientists have confirmed that this landscape is the closest representation of terrestrial Mars.
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This infrared image shows the southwest part of the Malaspina glacier in Alaska. The light blue hue is marked by snow and ice. Yellow-orange and green hues represent dense vegetation, while orange represents the less vegetated areas. These images are being used to track glacial movement and size over time.
<img style="width: 800px;" src="" alt="" /> The Anti-Atlas Mountains in Morocco were formed about 80 million years ago as a result of colliding tectonic plates. This infrared image shows the folding of different rock types such as limestone, sandstone, gypsum, and granite.
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If you look closely enough, you can see the only ship that was using the Suez Canal in Egypt. This photo was taken in 2000.
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This complex system of dikes, dams, canals, bridges and locks holds out the North Sea on the southwest coast of the Netherlands. The rivers have created an enormous delta of waterways and islands over time.
<img style="width: 800px;" src="" alt="" /> In this image, you can visibly see the damage caused by the Hayman forest fire, which destroyed more than 90,000 acres of land in Colorado in 2002.
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The Kondyor Massif in Eastern Siberia, Russia, is surprisingly not a volcano. It is a perfect circular igneous intrusion that was formed from the crystallization of of molten magma under the Earth&#8217;s surface. The magma then rose to the surface and cooled. There&#8217;s a river that flows from the center.
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In glacial times, the Dagze Lake in Tibet used to be much larger, marked by the many fossil shorelines on the outer rim. Climate change caused the lake to dry up and the region to become more arid.
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The eruption of Mount Etna in Italy lasted almost a month in 2001. The bluish smoke in the bottom right corner shows the sulfur dioxide plume coming from the summit.
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This infrared image captures the extremely stark contrast between the US-Mexico border in California. The lush farmland found on the Southern California side (top) is marked by red differing from the barren Mexico border.
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This image shows the Escondida open-pit mine located in Chile&#8217;s Atacama desert. The landscape has been transformed for mining purposes. The mine currently produces 127,000 tons/day of ore comprised of copper, gold, and silver.

Sci-Fi Visions

ASTER has been taking pictures of the Earth since it launched into space in 1999. In that time, it has photographed an incredible 99% of the planet's surface. And NASA just released the images.

NASA Releases 3 Million Images of Earth—Here Are The Top 20

Three million never before seen images of Earth.

<h2>Cosmic Encounters</h2>
It&#8217;s been confirmed—<a href="http://gizmodo.com/ready-to-edit-something-just-slammed-into-jupiter-1767726856?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook">Jupiter was struck</a> by a celestial object. Don&#8217;t worry though, the <a href="https://futurism.com/monster-twins-two-new-exoplanets-twice-size-jupiter-discovered/">gas giant</a> has come out victorious in the cosmic fight (was there ever any doubt?).
In the video below, a small blip of light can be seen on the right side of the planet. It may look insignificant, but the resulting explosion was unusually powerful.
An amateur Austrian astronomer used a 20-centimeter telescope to chronicle the event. Because the small flash could have been the result of a technical issue, a second video—taken at the same time with a 28 cm telescope in Ireland—was used to corroborate the first, confirming the impact.
When you consider how massive the planet is (1,321 Earth&#8217;s could fit inside the gas giant), the &#8220;small&#8221; blip suddenly looks a whole lot larger. Check it out below:
<iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4LiL7RYG7ac?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Like Slamming Into a Wall</h2>
Given how big the blip looks, the piece of space-rock that hit Jupiter must have been massive to cause that type of impact, right?
Well, not quite.
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/03/29/jupiter_hit_by_asteroid_or_comet_in_march_2016.html">reports</a> that the asteroid or comet probably only measured a few hundred feet in diameter. However, when it comes to celestial collisions, the size of the attacker doesn&#8217;t matter as much as the mass of what it&#8217;s hitting. Plait explains:
<blockquote>
&#8220;On average (and ignoring orbital velocity), an object will hit Jupiter with roughly five times the velocity it hits Earth, so the impact energy is 25 times as high. The asteroid that burned up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was 19 meters across, and it exploded with the energy of 500,000 tons of TNT. Now multiply that by 25, and you can see how it doesn’t take all that big a rock to hit Jupiter for us to be able to see it from Earth.
&#8220;At these huge speeds, hitting the atmosphere is like slamming into a wall. A lot of people get understandably confused how an asteroid can explode due to air, but the pressures involved as it rams through the atmosphere at these speeds are ridiculously huge.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Jupiter is a resilient gas giant. In fact, it&#8217;s probably used to getting hit by passing asteroids at this point. The planet gets hit by something big enough to see from Earth about once a year—we&#8217;re just noticing it more now because our tech is evolving. 
Moral of the story: Keep your eye on the sky. You never know what you might see.

Off World

Astronomers have captured video evidence of a collision between Jupiter and a small celestial object. Though it looks like a small blip of light, the resulting explosion was unusually powerful.

An Object Just Collided With Jupiter and Astronomers Caught it on Video

It's been confirmed—Jupiter was struck by a celestial object.

<h5>An Active Dwarf Planet</h5>
Ceres is the largest body in the asteroid belt that rests between Mars and Jupiter. In fact, it&#8217;s so large that it is classed as a dwarf planet. Despite this, from Earth, Ceres appears to be just one of the (many) tiny points of light visible in the night sky, but the light it emits has an interesting story.
Observations made using the HARPS spectrograph at the European Space Agency&#8217;s La Silla Observatory in Chile have <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1609/?lang">revealed unexpected changes</a> in the <a href="https://futurism.com/19610/">bright spots</a> on Ceres. Careful study of its light shows the changes expected as Ceres rotates, but also that the spots brighten during the day and show a number of other variations.
In short, Ceres&#8217; spots are dynamic.
<h5>Surprising Results</h5>
<figure id="attachment_27437" style="width: 640px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/Ceres_Dawn_Feb19_2015_bright_spot_frames.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-27437"><img class="size-full wp-image-27437" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/Ceres_Dawn_Feb19_2015_bright_spot_frames.jpg" alt="ESO/L.Calçada/NASA/JPL-Caltech" width="640" height="274" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">ESO/L.Calçada/NASA/JPL-Caltech</figcaption></figure>
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has been in orbit around Ceres for more than a year, and it has mapped its surface in great detail, including these intriguing bright spots that reflect far more light than their much darker surroundings. The most prominent of these spots lies inside the crater Occator. Ultimately, they suggest that Ceres may be a much more active world than most of its neighbors.
A team of scientists observed Ceres with HARPS for a little over two nights in July and August 2015. &#8220;The result was a surprise,&#8221; says Antonino Lanza, at the INAF–Catania Astrophysical Observatory. &#8220;We did find the expected changes to the spectrum from the rotation of Ceres, but with considerable other variations from night to night.”
The team concluded that the observed changes could be due to the presence of volatile substances that evaporate under the action of solar radiation. When the spots inside the Occator crater are on the side illuminated by the Sun, they form plumes that reflect sunlight. These plumes evaporate quickly and lose their reflective quality. This effect changes from night to night, giving rise to additional random patterns.

Observations have revealed unexpected changes in the bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. Scientists assert that these changes show that Ceres is a dynamic, active world. 

A Study of Ceres’ Bright Spots Shows That They Are Changing

The bright spots on series appear to be moving. 

Terraforming literally means “Earth-shaping” and it is the process of deliberately shaping another world to make it suitable for human living. This will likely involve changing this world’s atmosphere, ecology, temperature, and topography, among many other things.
So, what would be involved in the ‘easy’ task of changing the environment of an entire planet? Let’s use Mars as an example.
Recently, <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-says-solar-storms-destroyed-mars-atmosphere-and-water/">NASA stated that</a>, thanks to powerful solar winds and missing CO2, terraforming Mars will be more difficult that we anticipated. But they noted that there&#8217;s still hope for the Red Planet.
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/145394263" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
To sum, <a title="Martyn J. Fogg" href="http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/cv2.htm" target="_blank">Martyn Fogg</a> talked about five critical changes Mars must undergo in his text “<a title="Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560916095/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1560916095&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=froquatoqua-20" target="_blank">Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments</a>.” They are as follows:
<ol>
<li>The surface temperature must be raised.</li>
<li>The atmospheric pressure must be increased.</li>
<li>The chemical composition of the atmosphere must be changed.</li>
<li>The surface must be made wet (preferably with water)</li>
<li>The surface flux of UV radiation must be reduced (exposure to a high level of UV radiation is EXTREMELY detrimental to humans)</li>
</ol>
It may be a long, long ways off&#8230;but it could be done; however, only if we form a global collaboration and truly invest in this effort. Assuming it’s possible to terraform a planet to support humans from Earth (non-genetically modified humans, that is), how cool would it be to step off of that spaceship and take a breath of fresh alien air?

The world's top experts think that, if we are to survive, we must leave Earth. But could we survive on another planet?

Terraforming a New Earth: The Making of Mars

Is there really any hope for an "Earth 2.0"?

The “Mayak” or “Beacon” satellite is one of the newest <a href="http://sputniknews.com/science/20160227/1035436151/mayak-satellite-launch-star.html#ixzz41wuZ8Amw">successful crowdfunding campaigns</a> in Russia. Launched by a team of aerospace engineers and enthusiasts from Moscow&#8217;s University of Mechanical Engineering (MAMI), the campaign is heading toward the next stage of the spacecraft&#8217;s testing before it is launched into space by the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket.
<h5>The Brightest Star in the Sky</h5>
On Thursday the team announced they have raised more than 1.5 million rubles ($19,650) on the <a href="https://boomstarter.ru/projects/shaenko/kosmicheskiy_sputnik_mayak/posts/15636">Boomstarter crowdfunding platform</a>, allowing them to complete the next stage of the <a href="https://futurism.com/china-launches-satellite-detects-dark-matter/">satellite&#8217;s</a> flight testing.
The project currently has 1.87 million rubles from more than 2,000 sponsors and is on the way to its next funding aim, which is to create another model of Mayak for Moscow&#8217;s Museum of Cosmonautics, where they showed their spacecraft to the public at a lecture last week.
<figure id="attachment_25795" style="width: 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-25795 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/12734113_962165280530691_2718354139493092499_n.jpg" alt="12734113_962165280530691_2718354139493092499_n" width="960" height="602" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The <a href="https://boomstarter.ru/projects/shaenko/kosmicheskiy_sputnik_mayak/posts/15636">Boomstarter</a> campaign page when the team reached their goal.</figcaption></figure>
The engineers’ next objective is to construct a system of aerodynamic braking for the Mayak. In the future, this system could help bring satellites to Earth without having to use an engine to pass back through the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere.
Once in orbit above the earth, the Mayak will completely change shape. The satellite will unfold a 16 square meter pyramid of reflectors that will reflect the Sun&#8217;s rays. This will essentially create a super-bright man-made star that anyone can follow using a smartphone app.
&#8220;We want to show that space exploration is something exciting and interesting, but most importantly that today it is accessible to everybody who is interested,&#8221; project leader and head of MAMI&#8217;s &#8216;Contemporary Cosmonautics&#8217; program Alexander Shaenko explained.
<blockquote>
<figure id="attachment_25797" style="width: 239px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img class="wp-image-25797 " src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/1035435999.jpg" alt="1035435999" width="239" height="129" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Source: Boomstarter</figcaption></figure></blockquote>
&#8220;The Mayak project is a team of enthusiasts, who are showing that space is simpler and closer than we are all used to thinking. We are sending a spacecraft into orbit that will be the brightest star in the sky, visible from any point on our planet.&#8221;
<h5>Priorities</h5>
The Russian space agency &#8216;Roscosmos&#8217; confirmed that Soyuz-2 may launch Mayak into space as early as this summer, when the carrier is also slated to carry the Kanopus-V-IK satellite into space to take images of forest fires.
The team hopes that the satellite is eye catching, especially to aspiring young scientists.
&#8220;Attracting young people to the field of cosmonautics is one of our priorities,&#8221; a Roscosmos spokesman explained.
<blockquote>&#8220;Roscosmos works seriously with universities and by supporting projects like Mayak we boost the motivation of students to work for Russian space rocket enterprises in the future. The team will get a great opportunity to create real spacecraft, and master the basics of satellite design.&#8221;</blockquote>

"We are sending a spacecraft into orbit that will be the brightest star in the sky, visible from any point on our planet."

This Satellite Will Soon be “The Brightest Star in the Night Sky”

More than 1.5 million rubles have been raised to fund the Russian “Mayak” satellite project. Will there be a new brightest star in the night"We are sending a spacecraft into orbit that will be the brightest star in the sky, visible from any point on our planet." sky?

Image

/ Off World

/ Earth

/ Mars

/ Terraforming