Researchers could soon draw inspiration from the science fiction story of Dune to transform Mars into a habitable, breathable world for humans.
The fictional desert planet of Arrakis, which serves as Dune’s main setting, was once a desert wasteland similar to the Red Planet, but was later terraformed into a lush, humid world; However, this has not yet happened in the two released films. .
Scientists at NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have long been working on plans to make Mars a suitable home for future colonizers.
These plans involve releasing water trapped on the planet’s surface, warming the air so inhabitants don’t freeze to death, and introducing bacteria to create oxygen, similar to how the sandworms’ metabolism creates breathable air in Dune.
Mars has no running water on its surface, but its atmosphere contains small amounts of water ice. Making the planet habitable would require humans to unlock frozen water in the atmosphere and beneath the planet’s surface.
Solar radiation has stripped away 90 percent of Mars’ atmosphere, stripping the planet of much of its water and locking the rest in ice and minerals. The fictional Arrakis was also once a paradise, and in Dunethere is a plan to restore it.
In the two installments of the film, the second part of which hits theaters on Friday, Arrakis is known for its harsh conditions that destroy mechanical equipment and bake people to death if they wander the sands unprotected.
The world It is inhabited by a native group of people called Fremen, who have lived in the planet for thousands of years and learned to adapt to the harsh environment.
Clothing called stillsuits helps them retain moisture that would be quickly lost in the desert heat.
Stillsuits have multiple layers of filtration fabric, as well as a nose plug that traps moisture, diverting sweat from the body and exhaled vapor into a bag that the wearer can sip from a tube.
Urine and feces are also captured, then the water is extracted and filtered before collecting it in the drinking bag.
“With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won’t lose more than a thimble of moisture a day,” said Fremen environmentalist Liet Kynes in the first film.
The stillsuit is very similar to that worn by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, where air humidity, washing wastewater and even urine are filtered, distilled and sterilized to produce drinking water.
In Dune: Part Two, we learn that the Fremen have a multi-generational plan to reshape the face of Arrakis.
To do this, for many years they have collected water in enormous underground wells.
A simulation showed how the climate behaved on Arrakis in the year 10,191 (left), when the film takes place, and how it behaved 50 million years earlier (right), before the planet was a desert.
A Fremen stillsuit includes a nose plug that captures water vapor exhaled by the wearer. That moisture is then filtered and collected in a bag, where it can be sipped from a tube.
Whenever a tribesman (or an enemy) dies, the water from their body is extracted and poured into vast pools, which are sacred to the Fremen.
They prophesy that one day a leader will emerge who can use this water to restore the planet’s once rich plant life.
Even within the sci-fi world of Dune, there is a logic to how this will happen. And it reflects the strategies that scientists have to terraform Mars.
One of the most important commonalities between Mars and Arrakis: vast water resources trapped beneath the planet’s surface.
In January, the Mars Express spacecraft revealed that there is a frozen water formation locked on the red planet.
This formation is two miles thick and, according to one estimate, if it melted it could cover the planet with almost nine feet of water.
Water ice is below the surface in the Medusae Fossae Formation, a large geological formation of volcanic origin near the equator of Mars.
Map of potential water ice thickness in the Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF). The water ice deposits are up to 3.7 kilometers thick.
But covering the planet with water is not enough.
Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a magnetosphere.
This electromagnetic field surrounds our planet and protects us from most of the radiation coming from the sun.
Without it, the sun’s rays would evaporate all the moisture on the planet. So even if we could somehow melt this equatorial water, it would simply evaporate into space.
And that’s exactly what happened to ancient Mars, which, like Arrakis, was once filled with running water.
So one strategy to terraform Mars would involve creating an artificial magnetosphere.
The now-retired scientist proposed covering the Red Planet with a giant magnetic shield to block it from the Sun’s high-energy solar particles.
This is exactly what retired NASA chief scientist Jim Green envisioned when he proposed that a giant magnetic shield could allow people to inhabit the planet.
‘Yes, it is feasible. Stop peeling and the pressure will increase. “Mars is going to start terraforming,” Green told the New York Times.
“The higher temperature and pressure allow the process of growing plants in the soil to begin.”
The process of making a planet uninhabitable and suitable for humans could take generations, but simulations showed that blocking solar radiation would begin to restore the Martian atmosphere in just a few years.
This would trigger a whole chain reaction: the planet’s equator would begin to warm and, eventually, its polar ice cap would collapse, releasing water into the atmosphere and land in the form of lakes, rivers and oceans.
Some organisms could be bioengineered to extract certain gases from the Martian atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and methane, and create nitrogen and oxygen. A series of possible steps are shown if Mars were terraformed.
Another strategy, which has been investigated by DARPA, is to use biology to our advantage.
There are many organisms that use chemosynthesis to survive. This means that they extract chemicals from their environment to produce the molecules necessary for life.
For example, bacteria that live near deep-sea volcanic vents convert poisonous hydrogen sulfide and methane into sugars that they use for energy.
If microbes like these could be deployed on Mars, they could consume the carbon dioxide and methane from the thin Martian atmosphere to produce water, oxygen, and possibly even edible carbohydrates.
This plan reflects part of the Fremen’s plan to terraform Arrakis.
In addition to them, the other main inhabitant of the planet is a species of gigantic sandworm called shai-hulud, which can measure more than a kilometer in length.
These animals consume sand plankton, somewhat like land whales. In doing so, they produce oxygen (sand contains the elements silicon and oxygen) which makes Arrakis’ atmosphere breathable.
Of course, there are some key differences between Arrakis and Mars.
Although Arrakis has a hostile environment, it is not completely uninhabitable.
In 2021 a team of researchers simulated The conditions of the planet as described in the novel and they discovered that people could actually live there.
Dune, part two ends without the terraforming plan coming to fruition, but in later novels, the Fremen slowly terraform the planet, beginning by planting small oases and developing technologies that can extract moisture from the air at night.
Their plan eventually produces a climate on Arrakis that allows people to walk without their stillsuits.
So if we humans ever want to make Mars habitable for people, it will likely be the result of many generations of work, with scientists dedicating their lives to a dream that most of them will never live to see.