How is it like to live on Mars? Six scientists emerge from a simulation Martian dome after 8 months. (Photo : HI-SEAS)
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is now proposing a new plan of creating organisms that have the ability to terraform Mars in order to make the alien world more suitable for human life. Scientists believe that in order to terraform Mars, the atmosphere will be made to heat up over time so that humans can colonize the Red Planet beginning with plant and bacteria.
Also known as the research arm of the U.S. military, DARPA revealed this week that it is now in the process of exploring new ways how to artificially create the desolate, dusty terrain of Mars into a more lush environment such as Earth's.
In order to begin this process on Mars, the agency revealed that the first step would be to genetically engineer plant life where recent evidence also revealed that water used to exist on Mars.
According to Alicia Jackson who is the deputy director of the DARPA Biological Technologies Office, this is the first time that we have a technological toolkit in order to finally transform alien worlds not just extremely hostile places on Earth but a Martian colony with humans living is sustainable and not just an alien planet to visit.
She adds that DARPA lab scientists are now conducting various experiments to manipulate different organisms that will someday thrive on the surface of Mars apart from E.coli and yeast.
To date, there are anywhere from 30 million to 30 billion species of organisms found on Earth where DARPA still has a long way to go by starting with two species in order to jumpstart the process of engineering biology.
DARPA's goal is to quickly map and engineer organisms compared to recent genome annotation software in order to discover engineerable systems.
