Reflected sunlight beam
Polar ice cap
Mirror swarm (statites)
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One of the most concrete engineering proposals for terraforming Mars is not biological but optical: a swarm of orbiting mirrors — "statites" held in place by solar radiation pressure rather than orbital mechanics alone — collecting sunlight and redirecting it onto the planet's polar CO₂ ice caps. Enough added flux drives runaway sublimation, releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere and starting a greenhouse feedback loop. This simulator models the real flux-balance physics: reflected power scales with mirror count, radius and reflectivity, the added flux at the cap depends on how tightly the swarm's aim angle focuses that power, and the resulting sublimation rate is set by CO₂ ice's latent heat of sublimation — watch the polar cap's mass visibly shrink as you dial the swarm up.