TO THE MOON, MARS, AND BEYOND: EXPEDITION WEEK: Mars: Making the New Earth

Corrie Oberdin - Social Media & Digital PR Consultant, sent me a note about some upcoming shows on the National Geographic Channel. One of them has to do with making the environment on Mars more habitable should we ever get around to going there.

While I was at NASA Ames I attended one of the work shops that talked about terraforming Mars. It might be interesting to see what Dr. Chris McKay has to say about the subject.

- LRK -

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http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/expedition-week/4588/Overview

The notion of bringing Mars to life -- transforming a cold, dry, uninhabitable desert into a living planet -- called terraforming, has been around for almost a century. Initially just a science fiction concept, it has become a subject of serious scientific investigation.

NASA astrobiologist Dr. Chris McKay has spent 30 years researching extreme environments to understand the potential of such planetary engineering. On the surface, the red planet's freeze-dried world of rocks, ice and dust looks like an unlikely place to plant a garden. But rocks and minerals found by the Mars rovers show it must once have had warmer, habitable living conditions. Now, using photorealistic CGI visualizations, we'll make a science fiction dream of Mars -- a world of trees, rivers and blue skies -- a plausible future, bringing it to life after three and a half billion years in a deep freeze.
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http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/expedition-week/4588/Videos/07257_00#tab-Videos/07257_00
Video "Preview: Mars: Making the New Earth" - An 18,500 foot volcano in Mexico is a living laboratory for NASA scientist Chris McKay as he investigates how to transform Mars from a cold, dead planet into a living world like planet Earth.
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A bit about Dr. McKay.
- LRK -

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http://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/people/mckay/
Principal Scientific Interests and Brief Background:

Dr. Christopher P. McKay, Planetary Scientist with the Space Science Division of NASA Ames. Chris received his Ph.D. in AstroGeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982 and has been a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center since that time. His current research focuses on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human exploration. Chris been involved in research in Mars-like environments on Earth, traveling to the Antarctic dry valleys, Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, and the Atacama desert to study life in these Mars-like environments. His was a co-I on the Titan Huygen's probe in 2005, the Mars Phoenix lander misson for 2007, and the Mars Science Lander mission for 2009.
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Dr. McKay on YouTube.
Hmmm, I remember him with a beard, clean shaved here.
- LRK -

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Tiny URL for some YouTube clips found with Google search for Dr. Chris McKay NASA Ames
http://tinyurl.com/yc654sc
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Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

The terraforming of Mars is the hypothetical process by which the climate, surface, and known properties of Mars would be deliberately changed with the goal of making it habitable by humans and other terrestrial life, thus providing the possibility of safe and sustainable colonization of large areas of the planet.

Based on experiences with Earth, the environment of a planet can be altered deliberately; however, the feasibility of creating an unconstrained planetary biosphere is undetermined. Several of the methods described below may fall within humanity's current technological capabilities, but at present the economic resources required to execute such methods are far beyond that which any government or society is willing to allocate.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicle the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately, more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). An additional collection of short stories and background information was published as The Martians (1999). The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards.

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http://www.astrobiology.com/terraforming.html
The Astrobiology Web: Your Online Guide to the Living Universe TM Terraforming
[Some links broken but enough to give you some information. - LRK -]

http://www.astrobiology.com/
http://www.astrobiology.net/
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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