Can Humanity Transform Mars Into a Utopia?

How long do you think we have until the Earth becomes uninhabitable? The Aztecs believed it would happen in 2012, but thankfully, they were wrong. Nowadays, some scientists think it will take at least 1.5 billion years; others, much sooner – 150 million years, according to BBC Science Focus. Although we might not need to leave our dear home for another 15 million centuries, space exploration has long piqued humanity’s interest. Hence, exploring other planets in the Solar System, specifically Mars, is a potential solution to our problem. Yet when we look at the Red Planet, we do not exactly see a sanctuary. If anything, we picture a foreign, dangerous world. So how could something so hostile ever become ideal? When we talk about a utopia, we usually imagine a peaceful society, fair judgment, a sustainable way of living and, overall, happiness. The word itself comes from Thomas More’s book “Utopia,” meaning literally “no place.” Mars might be exactly that – a world that does not yet exist, ready for us to create a perfect society from the ground up. Even so, building a utopia is not simply about futuristic cities. It means creating a planet where humans thrive both physically and socially.

Now that we know what we need, where do we begin? From an engineering perspective, the first challenge is the Martian atmosphere. Mars’ air is about 95% carbon dioxide, and is extremely thin. In fact, only about 6 mbars (millibars), compared to Earth’s ~1013 mbars (NASA Mars Fact Sheet; NASA Science infographic). That low pressure limits how much CO₂ the atmosphere can trap as heat, so even though CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, it’s not enough to warm the planet significantly. But pressure also affects water. On Mars, liquid water cannot remain stable. It either freezes into ice or evaporates directly into vapour through sublimation, as the thin air lowers the boiling point so much that H₂O molecules escape almost immediately (NASA terraforming summary). A major study by Jakosky and Edwards confirms that there is not enough accessible CO₂ in the polar caps and regolith to build a thick atmosphere capable of trapping enough heat for stable liquid water (Jakosky & Edwards, 2018). Simply put, releasing all the CO₂ available on Mars would not create an Earth-like climate, because the planet’s atmosphere is both too thin and too cold for water to flow freely. The other biggest obstacle to terraforming Mars is the lack of a global magnetic field. Earth’s magnetic field shields our planet from the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles that gradually strips away the atmosphere. Without a similar protection, any atmosphere we construct could slowly be lost to space. Modern research suggests that creating a long-lasting atmosphere might first involve building an artificial magnetosphere around Mars (Bamford et al., 2021; DuPont & Murphy, 2020). The idea of an artificial magnetosphere is… ambitious. One way to achieve this is to place a magnetic field generator near the Mars-Sun L1 Lagrange point, where the gravitational pull of Mars and the Sun balance, allowing a structure to hover. From that point, the artificial field could envelop Mars and deflect the solar wind, reducing atmospheric loss and protecting against cosmic radiation (NASA considerations; Bamford et al., 2021).

Engineering this would be astonishingly difficult. According to Bamford, the system would likely need a giant charged particle ring or an enormous superconducting electromagnet to create a planetary-scale field similar in strength to Earth’s. Far beyond current space programs, this would involve massive infrastructure, powerful energy sources and novel plasma control technology - advanced methods for managing and shaping charged particles in space, like controlling the solar wind or stabilizing a planetary magnetic field using superconducting loops, plasma confinement, or electrodynamic techniques. Fundamental physics studies show that building an effective shield with superconducting wire alone would need a loop radius of thousands of kilometres and an unimaginable amount of material. To put that in perspective, mining entire solar system bodies might be necessary (DuPont & Murphy, 2020).

Even if we somehow warmed Mars and thickened the atmosphere, oxygen would remain a problem. Producing breathable air would rely on photosynthetic organisms to convert CO₂ into oxygen, similar to Earth’s Great Oxygenation Event billions of years ago. On Mars, this process could take thousands of years because it demands vast amounts of CO₂ and water to produce sufficient oxygen.

With the technical aspects behind us, creating a “no place” is not just about breathable air and green hills, but also about building communities and human values. Studies of isolated environments, like Antarctic stations, show how small groups can either cooperate or fall apart. Mars would need systems that recycle air, water and waste superbly. These exist in partial form on the International Space Station (NASA ECLSS documentation), but scaling them up for a whole planet would call for moral decisions about whether we even have the right to alter another world, especially if microbial life already exists there.

Sustainability is another challenge. A Martian utopia would depend heavily on renewable energy, likely solar power, since Mars receives about 43% of the sunlight Earth does. Engineers would have to build enormous solar farms or nuclear reactors. Beyond that, every system would have to operate flawlessly to support a long-term population.

This brings us to the question: can humanity transform Mars into a utopia? Technically, it might be possible, but not anytime soon. Current evidence suggests full terraforming would demand technology far beyond what we have today and likely take longer than a lifetime. It requires a thicker atmosphere, a magnetic field and a reliable water supply. Even if all of this could be achieved, a Martian society would still need entirely new social norms and ways of living. So, perhaps before we try to settle a new planet, we should learn how to take care of the one we already have.

Writer:Adi Editor:Alice Eidelman

Bibliography

1.  NASA Planetary Data (Atmosphere, Temperature, Solar Energy)

   1. NASA. Mars Fact Sheet. NASA Planetary Science Division.https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html

   2. Used for:

      1. Mars atmosphere ≈ 95% CO₂

      2. Surface pressure ≈ 6 millibars

      3. Earth's surface pressure ≈ 1013 millibars

      4. Average temperature ≈ –60°CMars receives ~43% of Earth’s sunlight

2. Terraforming Feasibility – CO₂ Limits

   1. Jakosky, B. M., & Edwards, C. S. (2018).

   2. Inventory of CO₂ available for terraforming Mars. Nature Astronomy, 2, 634–639.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0529-6

   3. Used for:

      1. Mars does not have sufficient accessible CO₂ to create Earth-like pressure

      2. Releasing polar/regolith CO₂ is insufficient for full terraforming

3. Artificial Magnetosphere Engineering

   1. Bamford, R. A., et al. (2021).

   2. How to create an artificial magnetosphere for Mars. Acta Astronautica, 190, 417–427.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.09.023(Open version: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06887)

   3. Used for:

      1. Magnetic dipole at Mars–Sun L1

      2. Plasma interaction modeling

      3. Field strength estimates

      4. Engineering challenges of superconducting systems

4. NASA Vision 2050 Magnetic Shield Concep

   1. Green, J. L., et al. (2017)

   2. A Future Mars Environment for Science and Exploration. NASA Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop.https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/2017000571

   3. Used for:

      1. Proposal of magnetic shield at L1

      2. Concept that shielding could reduce atmospheric loss

      3. Long-term atmospheric retention strategy

5. Terraforming Timescale

   1. Fogg, M. J. (1991)

   2. Terraforming Mars. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 44, 3–10.

   3. Used for:

      1. Estimates that terraforming would take centuries to millennia

      2. Early engineering modeling of warming phases

6. Great Oxygenation Event (Oxygen Production Timescale)

   1. Holland, H. D. (2006).

   2. The oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 361(1470), 903–915.https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1838

   3. Used for:

      1. Timing (~2.4 billion years ago) of the Great Oxygenation Event

      2. Explanation of biological oxygen accumulation

7. ISS Closed-Loop Life Support Systems

   1. NASA. 

   2. Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS).https://www.nasa.gov/reference/environmental-control-and-life-support-systemS

   3. Used for:

      1. Closed-loop recycling systems

      2. Water and oxygen recovery technology