Original subtitles

The NASA plan holds that in the 2030s

humans will reach Mars.

The question of what comes next

is driving steady progress

in research on terraforming.

Transforming Mars will be

a tremendous undertaking.

Numerous difficulties are expected,

but human beings will overcome those difficulties

and turn Mars into a new Earth.

Chris McKay has a 100 year plan

for terraforming Mars.

It's the new frontier in space development.

The terraforming of Mars as conceptualized by

Chris McKay of NASA.

Humans will finally reach Mars in the year 2035.

After a voyage taking half a year,

the great day has arrived.

The crew of six includes

geologists and biologists.

They begin by conducting

a detailed survey of the Mars environment.

That will provide information hitherto

unobtainable by unmanned space probes.

With the landing craft as a base of operations,

the astronauts will also start preparations

to build a facility for long-term habitation.

The temperature on Mars ranges

from minus 130 degrees to plus 20 degrees Celsius

depending on season and location.

The average is an extremely low minus 55 degrees.

There is almost no oxygen.

The atmosphere is extremely thin.

Just 1/160th of Earth's.

The sun's harmful UV rays

beat down on the Martian surface without mercy.

Without a protective spacesuit,

human activity on the surface would be impossible.

Fortunately the gravity on Mars

is only a third of the Earth's.

That makes wearing these 100 kilogram

spacesuits a little easier.

A brutal environment, inimical to human life.

What would it take to turn this arid red planet

into a hospitable Earth-like place

of blue and green?

An atmosphere for one thing.

Earth's thick atmosphere absorbs the sun's UV rays

protecting life.

Another is water.

Earth's abundant waters

foster diverse living organisms.

A thick atmosphere and plentiful waters,

that's how it has to start.

The terraforming of Mars.

The concept of terraforming

has been seen in science fiction since the 1930s.

Such works describe the dream of humankind,

to transform other planets into

Earth-like environments that we can migrate to.

The first scientific proposals for terraforming

were elaborated by Carl Sagan,

NASA's leading advisor on planetary exploration.

In 1961 Sagan published an article

in the journal Science concerning the terraforming

of Earth's closest neighbor, Venus.

At the time Venus was thought

to be enveloped in an atmosphere

of water vapor and carbon dioxide.

Had to have a surface temperature

of 100 degrees Celsius.

Sagan argued that if this atmosphere

could be seeded with photosynthesizing bacteria,

they would produce oxygen

which would enable terraforming to take place.

However when Mariner 5

and other space probes reached Venus,

they discovered a more hostile environment.

The surface temperature is 460 degrees.

There's hardly any water, but there is rain.

Unfortunately it's sulfuric acid.

It was realized that transforming Venus

involved formidable technological difficulties.

But the times led people to think hard

about terraforming.

One country after another

developed nuclear weapons.

If there were to be a nuclear war,

scientists speculated that the consequences

could be disastrous.

Other issues included irreversible

environmental collapse,

uncontrollable population growth.

There was even concern that Earth

might become entirely uninhabitable.

That was when terraforming attracted new interest.

There were even scientists who began

seriously advocating migration to another planet

if humanity hoped to survive and flourish.

A top candidate was Mars.

Mars is only about half the size of Earth,

but similar to Earth in that it has four seasons

and a roughly 24 hour revolution on its axis.

In 1976 the Viking 1 space probe

made the first ever landing on Mars.

It sent back detailed images

of the Martian surface.

The bleak landscape reminded viewers

of Earth's deserts.

However as exploration proceeded,

it became clear that Mars also possessed

many of the conditions necessary for terraforming.

Both the Northern and the Southern Poles

of the Red Planet are covered by masses

of a white substance.

That substance turned out to be

a layer of solid carbon dioxide.

Dry ice.

At their smallest seasonal extent,

the two polar caps together

cover 2.4 million square kilometers.

That's six times the entire land area of California.

If those dry ice coverings could be vaporized,

a vast carbon dioxide atmosphere would be created.

Life forms would be protected

from the sun's UV radiation.

In 2008 the Phoenix Mars Lander

reached a site near the North Pole.

Its robotic arm dug into the Martian surface.

A few centimeters below the surface,

it discovered something extremely important.

Water ice.

Water exists as ice under the Martian ground.

Then in 2012, the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars.

It has discovered evidence

of the historical existence of water on Mars.

A deposit of pebbles;

each one just a few centimeters across.

It looks like the remains of a river whose flow

had once carried these pebbles along

wearing them down.

Other space probes orbiting Mars

spotted various features

suggesting that water had once flowed there.

The conclusion?

A large volume of water

had formerly flowed on Mars.

But due to such factors as climate change,

it had frozen and was now locked up underground.

Dry ice and water ice.

These can be used to create

an atmosphere and fresh water.

Scientists were intrigued.

They use their habitat as their house...

One of them, a well known proponent

of manned Mars exploration and settlement

is Robert Zubrin.

He says the method might be very simple.

On Mars there's places where there's water ice

and continent size regions.

Mars has got carbon.

Carbon dioxide.

The first step of terraforming

Mars is warming the planet.

But how precisely are we to warm up Mars?

Many ideas have been proposed.

One method stands out.

Use gases that produce a greenhouse effect.

The lead author of that proposal was Chris McKay.

We estimate that if we were

to produce greenhouse gases on Mars,

it could be almost as warm as Earth.

Warm at the freezing point where ice can melt.

Some of the same

greenhouse gases that have been blamed

for global warming.

They could also be the key to warming Mars.

In Chris McKay's concept,

the first step would be to build

a factory on Mars that could pump

carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases

into the Martian atmosphere.

The sun's rays warm the surface,

which would re-radiate infrared rays upward.

Some of this thermal radiation

is absorbed by the greenhouse gases

causing heat to build up.

Rising temperatures vaporize

the dry ice at the pulls

further increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere.

As the huge volume of ice under

the Martian surface also melts,

water will be produced.

This early theory relying on carbon dioxide

raised a serious question.

Producing an environment capable

of sustaining life would take thousand of years.

It was a question of time.

McKay's group at NASA continued

to study the problem and came up with a method

for dramatically shortening the time period.

It would use Octafluoropropane,

a fluorocarbon greenhouse gas.

Using this method,

terraforming would take just 100 years.

The proposal to use C3F8 was made

by one of Chris McKay's co-researchers.

Margarita Marinova.

These are the super greenhouse gases

that we have looked at.

One of these super greenhouse gases

has a warming potential about

24,000 times as strong as CO2.

That makes it a great candidate,

that means that you need to produce

24,000 times less of it

in order to get the same warming which is great.

At present, C3F8 is used as a cleaning agent

for such things as liquid crystal displays

and semiconductors.

It's ethicacy as a greenhouse gas is astonishing.

If it could form even one six millionth

of a Martian atmosphere,

it would raise temperatures by 30 degrees.

A big result for a small amount.

And they're also non-toxic to animals or humans.

So let's say in the future if you wanted

to breathe that air,

it would not have any toxic effects

to anything living on Mars.

Really the key part here is that

all of the elements that are required

for making these gases are available on Mars.

C3F8 is comprised of carbon and fluorine.

These elements are present on Mars.

There would be no need to transport

them all the way from Earth.

I think once people start going,

the whole process will proceed very quickly.

It's like building a bridge across a river.

It's very difficult to put the bridge in,

but once it's in everything moves very fast.

In the early stages of terraforming,

the atmosphere would still be very thin.

And the Martian sunset will still

seem quite fantastic.

The current blue sunset on Mars.

It looks blue because of the plentiful dust

strewn about in the thin atmosphere.

It's thought that the Martian dust

scatters the longer wavelength red light,

letting the blue light reach our eyes.

As terraforming proceeds,

the atmosphere will grow thicker

and Mars will have red sunsets

like those on Earth.

It's 2050.

15 years since terraforming commenced on Mars.

Thanks to the super greenhouse gas C3F8,

the average temperature has risen by 5 degrees.

Now it's only minus 50.

At this point,

a small scale facility would be built

for long term stays.

The live in staff would now number 20.

They would run a plant pumping

super greenhouse gases into

the Martian atmosphere.

But things would not always go according to plan.

The Martian climate occasionally gives rise

to unanticipated phenomena.

This is an image taken by

the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

high above the Red Planet.

The white plume is a giant sandstorm

called a dust devil.

The largest ones reach a diameter

of 70 meters and a height of 20,000 meters.

Dust devils are apt to arise

in the Martian spring and summer

when surface temperatures

exceed those of the surrounding atmosphere.

With wind speeds exceeding 100 meters per second,

these are ferocious tempests indeed.

The dust and sand they spray about

can cover a facility's solar panels

resulting in power shortages.

Ironically the fine particles swirling around

can generate electricity where it is not wanted.

A direct hit from one of these dust devils

can cause worse damage than expected

to a facility.

Resources needed for repairs might have

to be shipped specially from Earth.

If they were too late in arriving,

or if some mishap occurred,

survival on Mars could be threatened.

For terraforming to proceed on plan,

it is important to secure

the necessary resources on site.

Chris McKay believes that this problem

is surmountable using a certain

cutting edge technology.

I think synthetic biology

is going to play an important

role in terraforming.

The Sonoran Desert

straddles the border between Mexico

and the United States.

Here a specialist in synthetic biology

has been conducting research.

Okay.

Samples of desert soil are being collected by

Ivan Paulino Lima.

What does this have to do with Mars?

Well the United States

is an area that is closer to the equator

so the UV levels tend to be higher here.

So they need to cope with these high levels of UV.

Paulino Lima takes the Earth

samples to the leading facility

for astrobiological studies.

NASA's Ames Research Center.

Good morning.

Here there's a team

researching terrestrial organisms

that can survive in extraterrestrial conditions.

Their current research focus

is on how to produce certain microorganisms

artificially and deliver them to Mars.

They will be indispensable

to the terraforming of Mars.

From soil samples,

the researchers select those microorganisms

that are particularly resistant

to the sun's UV rays.

Then they extract their genes.

So breaking them makes the cell membrane

of these organisms and with different stabilizers,

and so in the end we will have a clear solution

with DNA that we can use for several purposes.

The solution contains the genes

of the microorganisms that are resistant

to UV rays.

Next they take those genes

and mix them with laboratory strain

E. coli bacteria.

And then they zap it with 1800 volts.

This high voltage surge opens holes

in the surface of the E. coli bacteria

through which the extracted genes enter.

That creates a strain of E. coli

with superior UV resistance.

Introducing foreign genes

to produce a new organism

with desired characteristics.

That's synthetic biology.

Here the research is on organisms

that can help secure the food supply on Mars.

So this is the anabaena here,

this is the engineered one with the sugar pore.

There is carbon dioxide in this tube here

and with the light energy it's creating sugar.

It fixes the carbon dioxide from the gas

and creates the sugar molecule.

It's sucrose which is what you get on your table.

So what you add to food is sucrose,

and that's what this is creating here.

Anabaena is a vegetable plankton

that lives in ponds and lakes.

It stores up in its cells

sugar made by photosynthesis.

Hitherto we have had no way to extract

the sugar without damaging the cells.

But researchers have suggested introducing

a gene for holes in the cell membrane,

making it easy to extract the sugar.

Grow it when you get to

the moon or Mars or wherever you're going,

and then you have a sugar production.

Basically a machine that you can grow

and make sugar almost infinitely.

The plan is to send a load

of anabaena into space in 2016.

It will be a test to see whether or not

sugar can be produced extra-terrestrially.

Synthetic biology is a brand new field.

Some of its applications,

however are ready for actual implementation.

Scientists here are cultivating

a microorganism into which the genes

of another creature have been injected.

Those of a spider.

The spider's thread has the strength

of steel wire but the elasticity of nylon.

Scientists have hitherto been unable

to reproduce it artificially.

Now synthetic biology is making that possible.

The spider gene fortified microorganism

makes a protein that serves as raw material

for the thread.

This has enabled the successful manufacture

of a new artificial material

based on spider thread.

The number of factories on Mars

using synthetic biology

to produce raw materials will increase.

Terraforming will accelerate.

The average surface temperature will rise

to minus 35 degrees Celsius.

At this point the dry ice covering

the polar caps will vaporize.

And something long desired will appear.

Water.

Near the equator there will be many days in a row

in which the temperature will rise

to plus 20 degrees Celsius.

The ice hidden below the surface will melt.

The water will pool forming rivers

and low land lakes.

Terraforming can now proceed to the next stage.

2060.

The 25th year of terraforming.

Mars is being transformed according to plan.

But then...

What happened?

The air condition is blown,

it's gonna take a while to figure out.

I don't know why.

Let's go, come on!

Commander take a look at this.

What is this?

It's a microorganism that has

multiplied with great rapidity.

If it starts reproducing inside

the life support systems,

human life could be threatened.

At least one scientist is warning about

depending on synthetic biology.

Margaret Race studies the effects

that advanced technologies have on life forms.

Synthetic biology is undergoing those

questions now on Earth because we don't have

the widespread use of it yet.

It's still in the laboratory.

And we're looking for all the places

that something could go wrong.

Let's think about it before we act.

Let's think about it before we put things

outdoors deliberately to let them

evolve or mutate or perhaps die.

So that we make wise decisions

and avoid problems ahead of time.

In 1991 an extraordinary

experiment was launched in the United States.

Biosphere 2.

An artificial habitat designed to test how

in the future humans might be able

to live in highly constrained circumstances

in outer space.

In the desert a glass enclosed

space was constructed

covering as much area as two soccer fields.

Some 3,800 types of animals and plants

were brought in.

Forest and ocean environments

were artificially created.

Water and air were circulated in a space

cut off entirely from the outside world.

The goal was to have eight people survive

in this closed ecosystem in two year rotations.

But after the first two years,

the experiment was shut down.

All sorts of problems had arisen.

From food shortages

to worsening interpersonal relations.

A major problem was the diminishing

amount of oxygen inside the facility.

There was one culprit.

Microbes.

The organic matter in the soil

used in the facility

nourished a population explosion

of microorganisms.

That led to a reduction in the oxygen level.

And it was not only microbes.

Insects including cockroaches

also reproduced rapidly.

The lesson learned was that

once things get out of control,

such creatures can pose a threat to humans.

What if the life form sent to Mars

evolved abnormally?

That is precisely the subject of a sci-fi

Manga series called Terra Formars.

The plot involves cockroaches

and a special variety of moss.

The surface of Mars is blackened

which absorbs sunlight warming the planet.

500 years later, human beings visit Mars and find,

that they are under attack by cockroaches

that have undergone a bizarre evolution.

The terror of dealing with this unknown

life form is thrillingly depicted

and the Manga is very popular.

The Manga's creator is Yu Sasuga.

He says the basic concept came to him

when he heard about the terraforming of Mars.

Artificial resource production.

Environmental modification.

That is the promise of synthetic biology.

A great ethical debate lies ahead.

It's 2075.

The 40th year since terraforming began.

The average temperature on Mars has risen

25 degrees to minus 30 degrees Celsius.

With the increase in carbon dioxide,

the atmosphere has thickened.

The blue sky resembles Earth's

and clouds have started to appear.

Near the equator there are now

over 300 days a year in which

the daytime temperature exceeds

20 degrees Celsius.

Large volumes of water well up from underground.

In low lying areas such as

the Utopia Plain in the North,

or the Hellas Basin in the South

oceans will have begun to appear.

And in the higher elevations

there will be snow.

Falling snow is proof that water

evaporating from the oceans

has begun to circulate in the atmosphere.

The snow colors the Red Planet white.

In another 30 years,

the Martian environment gradually

comes to resemble that of Earth.

By 2105, the 70th year since terraforming began,

a town has been built on Mars

housing a thousand people.

In addition to immigrants from Earth,

there will be people who have been

born and raised on Mars.

It is believed that Mars was once

covered with oceans.

Thanks to human intervention,

they have been revived.

They stretch as far as the eye can see.

Most of the Northern Hemisphere will be ocean.

A great land mass will spread across

the Southern Hemisphere.

Atmospheric pressure at the Martian's

surface will be 300 hectopascals

or 0.3 atmospheres in terrestrial terms.

That's one-third of Earth's.

At the low edge of the pressure envelope

within which humans can survive.

Then the historic moment.

Liberation at long last from heavy spacesuits.

Except for gear to supply oxygen,

the air will still be 90% carbon dioxide.

Finally the climax of terraforming.

Chris McKay and his group

are thinking of importing plants and fungi

from Earth to increase oxygen levels.

This could be the first yeah.

Then the next we can imagine

something like this like a moss.

They utilize sunlight more

efficiently than anything on Earth has,

then you could imagine making

an oxygen rich atmosphere much, much quicker.

It is expected that mosses

are so hardy that they will do well

despite the adverse conditions on Mars.

The barren Martian landscape

will be transformed into rich soil.

The next transplants will be alpine plants,

whose flowers can bloom even

in low atmospheric pressure.

McKay also envisages sending over

a certain insect indispensable

to the plant's pollination.

He has already conducted tests

to see if this insect can survive on Mars.

The honeybee.

At how low a pressure and with how little oxygen

can honeybees survive?

200.

Gradually the air is removed

and the pressure drops to 258 hectopascals.

As low as at the summit of Mt. Everest.

About 0.25 atmospheres.

They're moving clearly they're

not in as good a shape as they are

in atmospheric pressure.

One-fifth of an atmosphere

and still the insects are capable

of moving around.

If one really wanted to develop bees

they could survive at low pressure

and could pollinate plants

in a low pressure greenhouse

or on Mars with a lower atmospheric pressure.

Thanks to such insects,

the alpine plants on Mars will increase

their habitat range.

The year 2135 will be the 100th year

since terraforming began.

Grassy plains will spread over

the land surface of Mars.

The average temperature will be 5 degrees Celsius.

That's an increase of 60 degrees Celsius

in just 100 years.

The climate can now sustain larger

types of vegetation.

At this stage it will be conifers that are planted.

Conifers can grow steadily, even in cold ground.

Eventually these saplings will grow

into huge trees and form forests.

Maybe it's not very impressive life,

but it's life.

It is terraformed,

it is like Earth terraformed because

the important feature of Earth is life,

if Mars has life it's terraformed.

In just 100 years, the terraforming of Mars,

once merely a dream has become a reality.

A grand testament to human endeavor.

Subsequently the population of Mars

will exceed 10,000.

Humanity will be en route to building

a new civilization.

Mars will have been reborn as another Earth.

Terraforming calls on a broad range

of technologies.

They are related also to a restoration

of the Earth's own environment,

and the maintenance of a thriving

ecosystem here as well.

In the distant future, human beings may even shoot

out of our solar system to build civilizations

far, far away.

Terraforming.

A process that will constitute

a great step forward in allowing terrestrial life

to flourish forever in outer space.