Title: How Will We Colonize Other Planets? | HowStuffWorks
Headings: How Will We Colonize Other Planets?
How Will We Colonize Other Planets?
Lunar Living
Successful Settlement of Mars
Establishing Colonies Beyond Mars
Heading for a Planet in Another Star System
Citation

Content: Subsequent missions might expand that original base or set up others to form a Mars colony. Advertisement
On Mars, human colonists would have to grow their own food. NASA has been experimenting with growing vegetables on the International Space Station, and also has developed simulated Martian soil, which contains nutrients that plants would need to survive, to better understand how it could be used to grow crops [source: NASA ]. Over the years, science fiction writers and futurists have speculated about the possibility of terraforming Mars, to transform its environment to something closer to Earth's. One approach would involve releasing carbon dioxide trapped within the Martian surface to make the atmosphere thicker, which also would help to trap solar radiation and warm the surface. However, a NASA study published in 2018 concluded that the Martian surface doesn't contain enough CO2 to be put back into the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect, and it wouldn't be possible to extract much of what is there with present technology [source: NASA ]. In the next section, we'll talk about the possibility of colonizing an asteroid or dwarf planet. Advertisement
Establishing Colonies Beyond Mars
Do you think you could live on this rock?