Scientist Suggests Smashing Asteroid Into Mars To Make It Habitable

Taking inspiration from SpaceX founder Elon Musk, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson came up with a drastic plan to make Mars habitable for humans. According to Tyson, redirecting an asteroid or comet and intentionally crashing it into Mars could make the Red Planet more livable.

Musk made headlines recently after he brought up his idea from 2015 about detonating nuclear weapons on Mars. Theoretically, Musk noted the doing so would warm up the planet and make it livable for humans.

Taking cues from Musk’s idea, Tyson recently suggested taking a comet and crashing it into Mars. The astrophysicist shared his idea during a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

According to Tyson, this plan could solve the issue regarding the absence of liquid water on Mars. Since comets are mostly composed of ice, Tyson believes that colliding a massive one on the Martian surface could create lakes and rivers on the Red Planet.

“We think there’s a lot of water that was once on Mars that’s just sitting below in permafrost,” Tyson explained. “So you wouldn’t have to bring water to Mars, or in the distant future, we can just redirect a comet and get all the water we need.

Since Earth is usually approached by asteroids and comets, Tyson noted that the planet’s orbit would be the ideal place to obtain a space rock. Once a likely candidate has been identified, this can then be redirected to collide with Mars.

Although Tyson didn’t go into detail as to how the redirection procedure should go, it most likely will involve anchoring several spacecraft on an asteroid and pulling it towards the direction of Mars.

“There are comets everywhere, we know how to do it but there is no real incentive,” he said. “It happens with or without us as we are in the shooting path of thousands of asteroids and comets.”

“So what we would do is find one that is heading close to us anyway and in the seventh orbit down the line, or the hundredth orbit down the line,” Tyson added. “Then we would slightly deflect it in such a way that it would then collide with Mars.”