Terraforming

A worldforming operation on the surface of the icy moon Gixu-I. The thin ice shell conceals an ocean of supercritical low-point magma rock, a soft silicate compound containing variants of silicon, potassium, and magnesium. Careful orbital bombardments puncture holes in the ice out of which ruptures low-point magma rock. As it cools, other constituents trapped with it are released into the cold vacuum. The operation is slowly creating an atmosphere expected to last several million years.

Terraforming, also known as worldforming, is the process of artificially modifying the surface conditions of a planet or moon to meet some specific criteria, such as making it habitable for unaugmented humans or capable of supporting wild plants and animals. In the early days of space travel, innovators dreamed of terraforming the worlds of the Home system for the colonization of humans. Such a process however is so monumentally resource intensive and time consuming that only a handful of cases are currently being attempted, which take advantage of convenient circumstances to minimize the required effort.

Rather than terraforming an entire planet to suit the needs of life, it is drastically easier to simply adjust the biology of life to suit these otherwise hostile environments. Any world too challenging to augment humans or plants for will be exponentially more challenging to terraform.