Can we turn Mars green?

What scientists say it would take to make Mars habitable

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This month, we're taking a different approach. Instead of reviewing a preprint journal paper, we're looking at a summary guide on how humans might terraform Mars. Prepared by Devon Stork and Erika DeBenedictis of Pioneer Labs a nonprofit startup focused on engineering microbes for Mars - it served as background information for attendees of their 2025 Green Mars Workshop. And I think it does a good job of outlining how the Red Planet could one day be terraformed to support human life.

Today, Mars is a freeze-dried desert world, punishingly cold and exceedingly arid with only a minimal atmospheric blanket. But our exploration through the Space Age has revealed that the planet was once a much warmer, wetter place, and so efforts directed to terraforming the Red Planet effectively amount to trying to turn back Mars's planetary clock. Stork and DeBenedictis stress that this would require a multistage effort, maintained over centuries for full terraforming.