Terraforming Archives

Boundary conditions of CO₂ and grey opacity values for tree growth on Mars. Below the green zone conditions are too cold for tree growth. Within the green zone the darker the green color, the greater the proportion of Mars’ surface that allows plant growth (the darkest green corresponds to ~75% of the surface being suitable for tree growth. Above the dark green zone increase in CO2 or greenhouse opacity reduce the fraction of the planet suitable for tree growth as a result of high temperatures. The red lines indicate what percentage of the surface is too hot to allow plant growth. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0349588.g005 -- PLOS

Conceptual Thermal Constraints On The Growth Of The First Tree On A Terraformed Mars

by Keith CowingJune 23, 2026June 26, 2026

The environmental conditions on present‑day Mars are far outside the range tolerated by known complex terrestrial life.

This view of a crescent Mars was captured on May 15, 2026, at about 5:03 a.m. PDT by NASA’s Psyche mission as it approached the planet for a gravity assist. The image has been processed into a natural-color view using red, green, and blue data from the multispectral imager instrument. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Extinction events, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mars, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Mars, A Post-Habitable Planet?

by Keith CowingMay 27, 2026May 27, 2026

Mars provides a critical analog to once habitable exoplanets that have since lost their surface liquid water.

The concept behind the model is simple: life can travel to and terraform planets around other stars. In doing so, the planet that life travels to becomes more similar to the planet it came from. In this example, life from a planet resembling Earth travels to a red planet. The process plays out again and again. Each time, after being terraformed, a planet becomes more "Earth-like" than would be expected from random chance, given the locations of the planets. However, the focus is not on identifying Earth-like planets. Instead, the aim is to identify any group of planets that are more similar to each other than would be expected by chance, and are localised in space. This technique is agnostic: it does not require making assumptions about habitability or passing judgment on the "kinds of planets" that are amenable to life. -- Institute of Science Tokyo

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Panspermia, Planetary Protection & Biosafety, Press Release, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Terraforming/Panspermia: A New Way To Detect Life Beyond Earth Without Knowing What Life Looks Like

by Keith CowingApril 16, 2026

A research team of Specially Appointed Associate Professor Harrison B. Smith of Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo and Specially Appointed Associate Professor Lana Sinapayen of National […]

Artist’s impression showing possible choices for the scale of human involvement in the future of Mars.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Beta Pictoris, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Desert Worlds, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Mars, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

A Research Roadmap For Assessing The Feasibility Of Warming Mars

by Keith CowingApril 3, 2026April 3, 2026

This roadmap outlines research pathways to determine whether Mars could be warmed with non-biological methods. It does not presuppose that warming Mars is desirable; its purpose is to identify what […]

Aerosol deposition on the surface following 5 Mars years of 2.5 l/s release and 15 Mars years of shutoff. The distribution is comparatively uniform, with more deposition at low elevations, high latitudes and close to the release site (marked by the black cross). Including radiative cloud feedbacks makes little difference to the deposition. -- astro-ph.EP

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Desert Worlds, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mars, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Modelling The Long-term Impacts Of Artificial Warming On The Martian Water Cycle And Surface Ice Distribution

by Keith CowingMarch 4, 2026March 4, 2026

Recent papers by Ansari et al. (2024, Science Advances 10, eadn4650) and Richardson et al. (2025, arXiv eprint 2504.01455) have suggested that global warming of the Martian surface (‘terraforming’) by […]

In a futuristic world where teleportation technology has become a reality, a bustling cityscape filled with towering skyscrapers and advanced architecture stands in the background.

Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Terraforming Mars: Mass, Forcing, And Industrial Throughput Constraints

by Keith CowingMarch 4, 2026March 4, 2026

Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a small set of system-level feasibility constraints linking (i) target pressures and compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to required radiative […]

The phylogenetic tree showed the amino acid of xoxF and mxaF genes in MAGs from lava tubes, Haikou City, Hainan Province. The blue words indicated the acquired MAGs in this study. -- JGR Planets via x-mol.net

Analog Studies, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Habitable Zones, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Microbial Diversity and Metabolic Adaptations in Mars‐Analog Lava Tubes

by Keith CowingJanuary 3, 2026January 2, 2026

Lunar and Martian lava tubes will offer stable temperatures and radiation protection, making them potential habitats for extraterrestrial life. The Martian atmosphere, containing gases like H2, CO, and CH4, could […]

Key Martian stressors (e.g., UV radiation, extreme dryness, oxidizing conditions, methane release) -- Nature communications biology

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Desert Worlds, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

The Role Of Extremophile Microbiomes In Terraforming Mars

by Keith CowingDecember 1, 2025December 1, 2025

Terraforming Mars toward sustainable life-supporting ecosystems poses unprecedented challenges. Extremophilic microbes, which thrive in Earth’s most extreme environments, offer promising biological strategies for initial Mars colonization providing tools for resource […]

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Desert Worlds, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Mars, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

An Introduction To Mars Terraforming – 2025 Workshop Summary

by Keith CowingOctober 22, 2025October 22, 2025

Terraforming Mars is an age old science fiction concept now worth revisiting through the lens of modern science and technology. This document serves as a summary of contemporary ideas about […]

Target planet selection and terraformation. A. The objective function, used for determining the destination of life from a terraformed “parent” planet. Candidate destinations are first constrained by a maximum positional distance threshold; among these candidates, the planet closest in composition to the parent planet is chosen as the target. B. Simulations are initialized with 1 origin of life, causing the initial distribution of planet compositions (seen in A) to become correlated. C. An example of how we determine target planet composition when retaining 10% of the preterraformed planet composition. Note that while our simulations use a 3D space, the concept figure shows only show a 2D space for clarity. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Panspermia, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

An Agnostic Biosignature Based on Modeling Panspermia and Terraformation

by Keith CowingApril 14, 2025March 3, 2026

A fundamental goal of astrobiology is to detect life outside of Earth. This proves to be an exceptional challenge outside of our solar system, where strong assumptions must be made […]