MEXICO CITY – Scientists are using the pine-forested slopes of a Mexican volcano as a test bed to see if trees could grow on a heated-up Mars, part of a vision of making the chilly and barren red planet habitable for humans one day.

Planetary scientists at NASA and Mexican universities believe if they can warm Mars using heat-trapping gases, raise the air pressure and start photosynthesis, they could create an atmosphere that would support oxygen-breathing life forms.

[…]

The scientists are studying what makes trees refuse to grow above a certain point, where temperatures drop and the air becomes thinner, to see how easily they could grow on Mars.

“Things don’t really start cooking from a biological point of view until trees start growing. Trees are the engines of the biosphere,” McKay said.

“It’s possible Mars could have trees in 100 years. (But first) we need to understand what sets the tree line on Earth,” McKay said by telephone from NASA’s Ames center in California.

[…]

In the long term, Mars’s low gravity could also have odd effects on would-be settlers, causing people to grow alarmingly tall, and cosmic radiation could cause cancers and mutations.

McKay ruled out anything more permanent than short-term research bases for the next century. “I don’t have this vision of people moving to Mars the way people settled the New World, setting up homes and bringing their families.”

(via msnbc and The Sputtering Engine)

MIT folk have designed a new kind of spacesuit.

hello, mars

You can’t tell me they didn’t watch Robotech as kids.

he’s still a useless pilot

(via geekologie)