Terraformation of Mars

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Terraforming Mars is a hypothetical process to transform the entire Mars into an Earth-like planet. This requires a complete change of all factors of Mars including its temperature, pressure, water level, clouds, soil, etc. It would similar to playing TerraGenesis in real life. The ultimate goal of terraforming is to make Mars habitable for humans, plants, and other animals. For the process of terraforming Mars is the best planet because it has an Earth-like structure and most importantly Mars has water! Earlier scientists developed theories for the terraforming of Venus, but it was unsuccessful due to its extremely hot surface and acidic clouds. 

Terraformation of Mars is impossible without changing its temperature and atmosphere. Mars is a giant storeroom of greenhouse gas mainly carbon dioxide. This creates a lot of problems in its atmosphere. An era of meteor hits has made the atmosphere very thin, making it easy for gases like oxygen and nitrogen to escape its atmosphere. If not for meteors, Mars would have been a completely habitable planet and might have created a life of its own.  

Changing the Atmosphere:

Mars is located at the edge of the habitable zone, which means Mars is the only planet, after Earth, which will support liquid water on its surface if its atmosphere is changed in the right way. Many images and researches have proved that rivers were flowing on Mars a few million years ago. Martian poles still have a large volume of water ice and dry ice (frozen CO2). If all the Martian south pole ice is melted, it will create a planetwide 5-10 m deep ocean. Thus by creating a thick atmosphere we can create a Martian Pacific Ocean.

One way to do this is using ammonia. Many ammonia-rich smaller bodies are orbiting in the outer solar system. If somehow we make these bodies collide with Mars, they would add a large amount of ammonia to its atmosphere. Gaseous ammonia is not stable in the martian atmosphere. It will break into molecular nitrogen and hydrogen. However, this process will take millions of years to happen. Also, hydrogen is lightweight to stay inside the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is nearly 2.5 times denser than ammonia. Hence there will be little room for ammonia in the atmosphere and most of it will quickly escape Mars. 

    

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