Atmosphere of Mars proposed to be seeded with nanoparticles to trigger greenhouse effect

By Alimat Aliyeva

American and European planetary scientists have proposed seeding the atmosphere of Mars with a small amount of iron or aluminum nanoparticles, whose interactions with the Sun's rays will generate a greenhouse effect and make Mars more suitable for human life, Azernews reports.

"Our calculations show that these nanoparticles will rise into the upper atmosphere of Mars from the surface of the planet and hover in these air layers for a long time. Due to the powerful greenhouse effect, the ingress of even a small number of nanoparticles into the Martian air will increase temperatures on Mars by more than 30 degrees Celsius, which will trigger the melting of its polar caps," the planetary scientists write.

This initiative was put forward by a group of European and American planetary scientists led by Homan Mohseni, professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, in a comprehensive study of the prospects for colonization of Mars. One of the main obstacles to this is that the atmosphere of Mars is extremely sparse, which complicates the process of landing on its surface, and also prevents the occurrence of a greenhouse effect that retains heat on Mars.

Many planetary scientists suggest that this problem can be solved if the polar caps of Mars are somehow melted. Professor Mohseni and his colleagues discovered in the course of their calculations that this can be achieved if the atmosphere of Mars is seeded with rod-shaped nanoparticles made of iron or aluminum, whose length is about 60 times their width.

Such nanostructures, according to the researchers, reflect light and heat unusually well - they are 3-5 thousand times superior in this respect to the strongest artificial fluorinated greenhouse gases. Another advantage of these nanoparticles is that they can be produced directly on the surface of Mars, extracting iron from local rocks, which will allow for almost unlimited amounts of them on the colonized planet.

In addition, calculations carried out by scientists show that in order to warm up the atmosphere of Mars and start melting its ice caps, it will be necessary to constantly emit a very small number of nanoparticles into the air, about 30 liters per second. This is theoretically achievable with the help of existing technologies for the use of local resources (ISRU) and the production of nanoparticles, which suggests that the adaptation of Mars to human life will require significantly less resources and time than many researchers assume, summed up Professor Mohseni and his colleagues.