Challenges of Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars sounds like the ultimate “makeover”—turn a frozen desert into a second Earth.

The science begins with air. Mars has an atmosphere about 100 times thinner than ours,

so liquid water boils away and humans suffocate. Thicken the air, warm the planet,

melt polar ice, and maybe release trapped CO₂ from soil and caps. In theory,

factories could pump super-greenhouse gases; mirrors in space could focus sunlight.

Then the impossible problems arrive. Mars simply doesn’t have enough accessible CO₂ to build a breathable,

Earth-like atmosphere, and what you add can be stripped by solar wind because Mars lacks a strong

global magnetic field. Even if you warmed it, you’d still face