This may be getting ahead of ourselves. The US military division that researches advanced uses of technology has a team of biologists working on how to genetically create organisms that may one day be capable of terraforming a planet.

DARPA often work on projects that seem science fiction, but at a recent bio-tech conference, one of their team has stated that the current genome annotation software isn’t designed for quickly engineering new organisms and that they are writing their own application to fill the gap.

The Earth itself could be used as a test bed for such organisms, specially designed organisms could be created to clean up industrial waste.