Elon Musk looks back on his theory of "nuke Mars" and proposes to launch thousands of satellites to warm the red planet

• Elon Musk has often said that the atmosphere of Mars could be warmed to accommodate human life by destroying its poles and artificially creating a greenhouse effect.
• Musk, however, suggested Tuesday that satellites equipped with solar reflectors would be preferable to nuclear weapons.
• Spraying the sticks of Mars is not certain to have the effect sought by Musk, as they may not contain enough carbon dioxide to warm the atmosphere sufficiently.

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Elon Musk has a new idea to make the atmosphere of Mars more livable – and that does not include the launch of nuclear weapons at its poles.

Since 2015, Musk has suggested that the launching of thermonuclear weapons over the ice caps at the Mars poles could warm the planet's atmosphere, with the ultimate goal of making it habitable for humans. His theory is that vaporization of water trapped at the poles would release carbon dioxide, which would create a greenhouse effect.

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Musk reiterated the idea last week and even created "nuke Mars" t-shirts. Tuesday, however,he tweeted a new theory, replace the hydrogen bombs with satellites.

"Maybe it makes sense to have thousands of solar reflector satellites ???? to warm Mars against artificial suns (to be determined), "said Musk. "Artificial suns" is Musk's reference at a theoretical current of nuclear reactions.

However, Musk has not completely abandoned nuclear weapons.

"Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of nuclear fusion explosions with very low spinoffs over the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Just like our sun, it would not become radioactive Mars, Musk said in a follow-up tweet.

he also said that he thought the method was "not risky".

Replacing nuclear weapons with satellites may not solve some of the major problems Musk's dream of terraforming Mars is dreaming of. An article published in Nature Astronomy last year concluded that the release of CO2 from Mars would not be enough to properly transform its atmosphere for two reasons.

The researchers first found that there is not enough CO2 trapped in the poles to produce a fairly intense greenhouse effect. And second, unlike the Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is continually being lost, so that any gas produced would drift slowly into space.

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