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Mars and Jupiter Get Chummy in the Night Sky. The Planets Won’t Get This Close Again until 2033

This combination image, created from two photos provided by NASA, shows Jupiter pictured on April 3, 2017, left, and Mars pictured on Aug. 26, 2003, right. (NASA via AP)
This combination image, created from two photos provided by NASA, shows Jupiter pictured on April 3, 2017, left, and Mars pictured on Aug. 26, 2003, right. (NASA via AP)
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Mars and Jupiter Get Chummy in the Night Sky. The Planets Won’t Get This Close Again until 2033

This combination image, created from two photos provided by NASA, shows Jupiter pictured on April 3, 2017, left, and Mars pictured on Aug. 26, 2003, right. (NASA via AP)
This combination image, created from two photos provided by NASA, shows Jupiter pictured on April 3, 2017, left, and Mars pictured on Aug. 26, 2003, right. (NASA via AP)

Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade.

They’ll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system’s biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their respective orbits.

The two planets will reach their minimum separation — one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa. But they won’t appear that much different hours or even a day earlier when the sky is dark, said Jon Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

The best views will be in the eastern sky, toward constellation Taurus, before daybreak. Known as planetary conjunctions, these comic pairings happen only every three years or so.

"Such events are mostly items of curiosity and beauty for those watching the sky, wondering what the two bright objects so close together might be," he said in an email. "The science is in the ability to accurately predict the events years in advance."

Their orbits haven’t brought them this close together, one behind the other, since 2018. And it won’t happen again until 2033, when they’ll get even chummier.

The closest in the past 1,000 years was in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as a single bright object, according to Giorgini. Looking ahead, the year 2348 will be almost as close.

This latest link up of Mars and Jupiter coincides with the Perseid meteor shower, one of the year's brightest showers. No binoculars or telescopes are needed.

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Scientists Propose Warming Up Mars by Using Heat-trapping 'Glitter'

This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
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Scientists Propose Warming Up Mars by Using Heat-trapping 'Glitter'

This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout
This image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the Martian surface southwest of the rover's landing site. The picture was released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Janaury 10, 2004. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell University/Handout

The idea of transforming Mars into a world more hospitable to human habitation is a regular feature of science fiction. But could this be done in real life?
Scientists are now proposing a new approach to warm up Earth's planetary neighbor by pumping engineered particles -similar in size to commercially available glitter and made of iron or aluminum - into the atmosphere as aerosols to trap escaping heat and scatter sunlight toward the Martian surface. The idea would be to augment the natural greenhouse effect on Mars to raise its surface temperature by roughly 50 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) over a span of a decade.
This alone would not make Mars habitable for people, but the scientists who developed the proposal see it as a potentially doable initial step.
"Terraforming refers to modifying a planet's environment to make it more Earth-like. For Mars, warming the planet is a necessary, but insufficient, first step. Previous concepts have focused on releasing greenhouse gases, but these require large amounts of resources that are scarce on Mars," said University of Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite, who helped lead the study published this week in the journal Science Advances.

"The key elements of our paper are a novel proposal to use engineered nanoparticles to warm Mars' atmosphere, and climate modeling that suggests this approach could be much more efficient than previous concepts. This is important because it presents a potentially more feasible method for modifying Mars' climate, which could inform future Mars exploration strategies," Kite added.

NASA has sent robotic rovers to explore the Martian surface and the InSight Lander to study the planet's interior. The US space agency's Artemis program aims to put astronauts in the coming years on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 in preparation for potential future human missions to Mars.

There are numerous challenges to human settlements on Mars: lack of breathable oxygen, harmful ultraviolet radiation due to its thin atmosphere, salty soil hostile to growing crops, dust storms that sometimes cover much of the planet and more. But its frigid temperatures are a serious impediment.

"We propose to show that the idea of warming Mars isn't impossible. We hope that our finding encourages the broader scientific community, and the public, to explore this intriguing idea," said study lead author Samaneh Ansari, a doctoral student in the electrical and computer engineering department at Northwestern University in Illinois.
The median Martian surface temperature is about minus-85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-65 degrees Celsius). With its tenuous atmosphere, solar heat on the Martian surface readily escapes into space. The proposal would aim to allow liquid water to exist on the surface of Mars, which has water in the form of ice at its polar regions and its subsurface.
The scientists proposed continuously releasing tiny rod-shaped particles - nanorods - into the atmosphere at a rate of about eight gallons (30 liters) per second for years.
"The idea is to either ship the material or better yet, ship the manufacturing tool and make the nanorods on the planet since iron and aluminum are abundant on the surface of Mars," Ansari said.

The researchers are mindful of the possibility of unintended consequences in terraforming another world for humankind's benefit. Scientists, for instance, are eager to learn whether Mars has harbored life in the past - or perhaps currently, in the form of subsurface microbes.
"Although nanoparticles could warm Mars, both the benefits and potential costs of this course of action are currently uncertain. For example, in the unlikely event that Mars' soil contains irremediable compounds toxic to all Earth-derived life, then the benefit of warming Mars is nil," Kite said.
"On the other hand, if a photosynthetic biosphere can be established on the surface of Mars, that might increase the solar system's capacity for human flourishing," Kite added. "On the costs side, if Mars has extant life, then study of that life could have great benefits that warrant robust protections for its habitat."