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Bad news for those who dream of changing the environment of Mars to make it an Earth bis: the red planet would not have enough carbon dioxide available to recreate an atmosphere thick enough to make it habitable, according to researchers.
A study published in the journal Nature Astronomy looked at the idea that technologies could transform this dry and desert planet to make it look like Earth.
This is the concept of "planetary engineering" or "terraforming", dear to science fiction, but also of interest to scientists. The perspective of NASA's manned missions to Mars in the medium term and that of the establishment of human settlements, evoked by billionaire Elon Musk, led researchers to look further into this hypothesis defended by the boss of SpaceX. 19659003] "We wanted to see what it was possible to do" with carbon dioxide (CO2) "in the current state of technology," says Bruce Jakosky, from the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) and first author of the study
Smaller than Earth, Mars has a very thin atmosphere, made up of 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure is very low compared to that of our planet. And it's cold: the average temperature is -63 degrees Celsius.
"The purpose of this + terraforming + would be to provide Mars with an atmosphere as thick as Earth's," says Bruce Jakosky.
The agent of this transformation of the environment would be carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas stored in the Martian rocks and under the icecaps, among others.
If we could release this gas into the atmosphere, we could hope to make it less thin, warm the planet and, by increasing atmospheric pressure, allow the liquid water to stay on the surface, says the researcher.
"Men would no longer need to wear of diving suits, rising temperatures would make life easier for them, "says Bruce Jakosky, who participated in NASA's MAVEN mission, launched in 2013 to study the Martian atmosphere.
Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards, from Nort Hern Arizona University in Flagstaff have compiled an inventory of different non-atmospheric CO2 "reservoirs", based on data collected by several Martian missions for several decades.
"This includes ice caps, CO2 content in carbon rocks and CO2 molecules of soil dust, "explains Bruce Jakosky
" We found that there was not enough carbon dioxide available to create sufficient global warming, even though was able to release everything into the atmosphere, "he says.
At best, accessible CO2 could triple Mars's atmospheric pressure – only one-fiftieth of what would be needed to make Mars habitable for humans. And to increase the temperature by less than 10 degrees Celsius.
"What's more, it would be very difficult to extract this CO2," says the researcher.
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