What if we could turn the Red Planet green?
The idea of Mars made verdant with grasses, trees and other Earthly life-forms may sound like science fiction, but at least one small group of scientists and engineers is working to make it a reality. Pioneer Labs, a nonprofit research organization led by CEO Erika DeBenedictis, recently announced what it calls “the first microbe for Mars”: a microorganism adapted to Martian conditions that might someday help humans survive there, too.
Such bioengineered bugs could, in principle, allow astronauts to better “live off the land” on Mars by converting the planet’s raw resources into building materials for habitats, fertilizers for crops, and other products. But the broader vision of Pioneer Labs is far more audacious and fraught: to use biology to help transform Mars into a more habitable and Earth-like world. Terraforming remains a distant and deeply speculative prospect beset by enormous scientific and engineering challenges. It also raises fundamental questions about whether and how humans should ever deliberately unleash Earth life on an alien world.
Scientific American sat down with DeBenedictis to explore the scientific promise, technical hurdles and ethical dilemmas of sending bioengineered terrestrial microorganisms to Mars. What could such organisms realistically accomplish? How close are we to deploying them beyond Earth? And what obligations do we have to preserve a world where the past or present existence of indigenous life remains uncertain? The answers to these questions could ultimately help shape a larger debate about humanity’s extraterrestrial future—and whether the impulse to make other worlds more like our own should be tempered by any obligation to leave them undisturbed.
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