The biggest obstacle is probably how scarce water is on Mars. Like this desert moss might survive for a while but without water it won't be able to reproduce and spread. The team in the link above is considering genetically engineering an organism to absorb water from the atmosphere but even then it is just trace amounts.
Life requires water to survive and grow, doesn't seem like you can have a living organism terraform Mars for you unless you've introduced a ton of water through other means.
> Life requires water to survive and grow, doesn't seem like you can have a living organism terraform Mars for you unless you've introduced a ton of water through other means.
This is the example I constantly refer to about how slow progress has been with probes and rovers, and why we really need feet on the ground. Mars is surprisingly relatively moist. The topsoil is about 2% water by mass! [1] To use the really confused metrics from the article - that's a liter of water per cubic foot of soil! The even more enticing thing is what's below? It's strongly suggestive that it may be even more moist below.
Back to the slowness - this was only discovered in 2013! It's one of the very few things that "The Martian" got accidentally wrong. The book was written before this discovery was made, and most people thought the soil was as barren and dry as it looks. It's not!
Does that mean the dust wouldn't be as toxic / sharp and is less likely to cause massive damage to things, especially if an environment were partially buried?
Antarctica has yielded plenty of Mars rocks, bits of Mars that were blasted off one planet by a collision to eventually land on earth. I think that dropping millions/billions more comets onto Mars might come back to haunt us.
ENETUNREACH: The Chinorussese Solar Federation is blockading platinum rich asteroids until they get back war criminal and musician Vladimir the handyman, accused of using a wrench to knock a satellite of out orbit back onto Earth
It might not work for greening mars johnny-appleseed style, but it would be nice to have plants that can survive for some time if the greenhouse they are in has a technical issue.
"Survive" means, after growing in normal Earth conditions, seven days' exposure to Mars-like conditions didn't kill the plants, and they were able to regenerate after being returned to Earth-like conditions. So it doesn't show the plants could actually grow on Mars.
Life is pretty good at adapting. If we did a lot of selective breeding and genetic manipulation ahead of time and then made a sustained effort to repeatedly seed the more temperate locations on Mars we might eventually see something survive. I do think it's a bit early for that stage of terraforming. We really should experiment with smashing asteroids into Mars to see if we can kick up enough CO2 to make a difference first. I also like the idea of repeatedly impacting a single crater in order to excavate a very deep and wide hole to trap atmospheric gasses and create enough pressure near the bottom for a more human friendly environment. It'd have the added benefit of depositing a bunch of metals and other elements in a convenient location where they could be mined and smelted.
I look forward to seeing The Moss in theaters several years from now. Opening scene is a beautiful valley which turns out to be Mars followed by two hours of seeing how it has spread, done some irreparable damage to the planet which requires intervention to save surrounding planets, all while the mutant gene continues wreaking havoc on unsuspecting scientists trying to study the issue. Killer weed from outer space. Spreads on metals which alters their material properties. Filters certain gases or creates localized atmospheric conditions which prevent the team of scientists, and maybe frontier communities, from escaping the planet while their other resources get taken over by the moss... there's a lot of shlock possible here.
I'd expect it to be more like "Life - 2017" where we think we can be smart and manipulate something in a "controlled" environment only to have the hubris bite us in the ass.
1 mistake, incorrect assumption or missing data and we will mess up the only planet in solar system at least theoretically ok for terraforming atrempts, even if not ideal.
If we should seed planet (and we shouldnt at this point, we are still pretty much clueless in so many things), at least with something that produces O2. But we shouldnt anyway, 1 bad mutation and we will have maybe cyanide or trifluorides in atmosphere instead on top of current challenges.
I´m not an expert, but, I remember reading somewhere that Mars does not have enough gravity to support an atmosphere suitable for humans, most water molecules can evaporate "into space". Due to Mars lower gravity 3.71 m/s^2 (roughly 38% of earth´s), its more feasible for "normal" molecules to achieve escape velocity and thus bleed into space....
So you are saying if we used this stuff as an air recycler in a Mars colony, and there was a catastrophic failure we could repair the recycler without losing the greenery?
Probably not, there is not much on Mars, specifically water and nitrogen availability and other minerals, organic materials like amino acids in the soil, and lack of a root microbiome.
A plant would have to completely change how it operates, which is unlikely under selection processes.
Well, they didn't try growing it in Martian-like soil or with Martian levels of surface radiation. So the quotes in the headline are doing a lot of work here.
How hard is it to genetically engineer or develop some plant that can thrive on Martian conditions? Even if this particular desert moss wouldn't be a perfect match for Mars, maybe its a good starting point?
Is something that lives at +30C to -80C on Martian chemistry impossible?
It's almost certainly impossible. The amount of radiation, the toxic chemistry of martian soil, the lack of any form of liquid water, the long stretches of time with far below 0 temperatures [Edit], the near 0 atmosphere - all combined make it impossible for anything resembling Earth life to survive on Mars for anything close to a year, nevermind actually thriving.
Edit: you could first try to make a plant that thrives at the top of mount Everest and in Antarctica, and then add a significant amount of radiation, make it much colder, grow it in permanganate, and you might have something approaching survivability for Mars.
There is no soil on Mars either. There are rocks, dust, and sometimes ice. And my point is that Mars is many times worse than a combination of Antarctica and Mt Everest.
Mars is not strictly worse than the peak of Everest even if it’s overall worse. Moss can survive extremely low temperatures as long as it occasionally gets above freezing but it can’t grow on ice.
Lack of oxygen on Mars precludes flowering plants but not every organism needs oxygen.
It absolutely is. The only way in which it might be slightly more hospitable is that the regolith is easier to bury roots into than rock.
> Moss can survive extremely low temperatures as long as it occasionally gets above freezing but it can’t grow on ice
Granted, though I doubt it can survive martian temperatures for long.
> Lack of oxygen on Mars precludes flowering plants but not every organism needs oxygen.
The almost complete lack of an atmosphere on Mars definitely prevents any multi-cellular Earth-like organism from developing and thriving there, though. It's not just that there is no oxygen, there isn't almost anything at all, atmospheric density is 20g/m^3 at ground level, compared to Earth's 1200g/m^3 at sea level, or about 400g/m^3 at the top of Everest.
And you also have to remember the extreme radiation and the toxic regolith, plus the complete lack of any easily extractable nutrients in the "soil", and the lack of any kind of humidity (as all water is frozen more or less at all times).
Radiation is probably the least important factor. Annual dose on the surface is only 240-300 mSv. An issue for humans but we’re terrible at withstanding radiation. A colony of Deinococcus radiodurans is capable of withstanding an acute dose of 5,000,000 mSv (5,000 Gy) with minimal issues.
Temperature is similarly less problematic than you would assume. Daily temperatures can reach well over 20C near the equator. It gets really cold, but once an organism freezes going super cold doesn’t really do anything. Thus storing human sperm at minus 196C even though they clearly weren’t evolved to deal with such temperatures.
Lack of water is the major issue. So yes overall Mars is significantly worse for life but it’s surprisingly close.
The problem with temperature should be technically solvable at small scale.
Something like a transparent fridge fueled by a small nuclear reactor that would trigger a thermostat to grant a minimum temperature each night. This could hypothetically hold arctic plants for a while, maybe a lot of time being extra optimistic.
A problem would be to protect the reactor and windows to be damaged by sand but if you have nuclear energy you have a source of electricity. The production would be really low in any case, but... not impossible, just extremely difficult.
A good start might be lichens. Lichens in the Antarctic can survive and reproduce while being very cold and dry, albeit their growth rates are very slow.
> In the case of Buellia frigida in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region, the growth rate may be as little as 1 cm per 1,000 years.
This obsession with mars seems like such a mistake. Bezos camt make a rocket for shit but he seems rigjt about oneill cylimders being the correct solution. Create limitless surface area and avoid ha ing to go up and down a gravity well is a massive win. I cant see how we are better off spending trillions on mars vs trillions on oneill cylinders.
if we put a nuclear reactor on the moon or mars to just burn rock, would that release C02 in to the atmosphere to where we could oxygenate it over a few decades? e.g. if there a nuclear reaction that could release oxygen and other elements from rock, we could possibly terraform a planet pretty fast.
I know it's not very scientific, but that's sorta my feeling too, lets just start seeding Mars with a bunch of extremophile plants and bacteria and see if any of it takes.
The goals of colonization and exploration of the red planet are not always aligned. I for one am not concerned regarding contamination, but I understand why others might have different priorities.
The biggest obstacle is probably how scarce water is on Mars. Like this desert moss might survive for a while but without water it won't be able to reproduce and spread. The team in the link above is considering genetically engineering an organism to absorb water from the atmosphere but even then it is just trace amounts.
Life requires water to survive and grow, doesn't seem like you can have a living organism terraform Mars for you unless you've introduced a ton of water through other means.