NASA Considers Magnetic Shield to Help Mars Grow Its Atmosphere

Popular Mechanics ^ | Mar 1, 2017 | Jay Bennett

[BenLurkin]

Such a shield could leave Mars in the relatively protected magnetotail of the magnetic field created by the object, allowing the Red Planet to slowly restore its atmosphere. About 90 percent of Mars's atmosphere was stripped away by solar particles in the lifetime of the planet, which was likely temperate and had surface water about 3.5 billion years ago.

According to simulation models, such a shield could help Mars achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth in a matter of years. With protection from solar winds, frozen CO2 at Mars's polar ice caps would start to sublimate, or turn directly into gas from a solid. The greenhouse effect would start to fill Mars's thin atmosphere and heat the planet, mainly at the equator, at which point the vast stores of ice under the poles would melt and flood the world with liquid water.

"Perhaps one-seventh of the ancient ocean could return to Mars," said Green.

[Vendome]

“I don’t know...”

[BenLurkin]

Third base.

[PapaBear3625]

It seems to me that, if they want to grow the atmosphere, they need to grow the mass of the planet. Mars isn’t that much bigger than our moon and its lack of gravitational pull would make it hard to hold onto an atmosphere.

Venus is 81% of the mass of Earth, yet has a surface atmospheric pressure of 92 times earth surface pressure.

[DiogenesLamp]

Any global field would require a lot of energy due to the flux, but it wouldn’t have to be very strong at any one point (although I’ve been mulling the benefits of large distributed infrastructure that produce weak fields over a large area vs. large numbers of small infrastructure elements that each produce very strong fields in a small area).

This was exactly the idea that I had thought of several years ago when I first heard of the solar wind stripping Mars' atmosphere. Build a whole lot of magnet stations all over Mars, and let their fields sum together. I have to admit I didn't think of the Lagrange point idea. That sounds like a possibly better approach.

I am pleased to see people are thinking along the same lines.

On another Mars related issue, should Phobos be boosted up to rendezvous with Deimos, or should it be crashed into the planet to add more mass?

A single moon would help stabilize Mars, but Mars could always use more mass.

[Yardstick]

They’d be begging Earth to send toilet paper within months.

[Rastus]

Well, we can send them $60M worth of Barky and the Moose’s memoirs. ;)

[Reily]

It’s not just one thing, that’s a problem too!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I would think that an effort like this to build a device that emits a protective magnetic shield would be best directed at enabling future spacecraft with it. Such a device that protects humans in spacecraft from the effects of solar wind particles, etc would be worth its weight in gold pressed Latinum.

[SunkenCiv]

Huge magnetic tail discovered behind Mars
unexplained-mysteries.com
Posted on 10/22/2017 10:43:53 AM PDT by BenLurkin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3597442/posts

[GOPJ]

Mars is basically dead now... otherwise I'd agree with you. Yeah, we don't know enough to go mucking with planetary level ecosystems, but come on, - what's the worst that can happen? A dead planet stays dead? Heats up too much?