Bulgarian Margarita Marinova, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology and co-author of a NASA study, is planning to turn the Red Planet into a green one, one that could support life.
"What we propose is to use greenhouse gases - the same ones that are currently on the earth causing climate change," Marinova told CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen.
Marinova, who hopes to be one of the first people on Mars, says that the goal is to warm the planet enough so that its south polar cap will evaporate.
"Once we have a colony on Mars, they'll be having their own production and it'll be easy for them to produce these greenhouse gases," Marinova said.
"It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any," CBS commented.