Last week, the Trump administration released a presidential budget request that would cancel almost all NASA science missions in order to focus on putting humans on Mars. It's mainly a showy, ...

The concept of terraforming Mars — transforming the planet's climate to support life as we know it — has long belonged to the realm of science fiction. But a new study argues that it's time to take ...

Terraforming is the theoretical process of transforming a planet or moon to make it habitable for humans and other Earth-like life. The concept involves altering an alien world's atmosphere, ...

This story originally featured on the MIT Press Reader. Exploration, habitation, and resource extraction all carry a risk of inflicting environmental damage in space, just as they do here on Earth.