The Current History of Mars

The "Extraplanar Land Market Agreement" is signed. Put simply, the UN is granted the right to sell land outside of earth's orbit to terraforming contractors to own. This came about after decades of difficult political negotiations, this global agreement between the UN's recognized 193 countries to sell planetary bodies in the solar system would become a large milestone in human history. At the time, though, most of the world dismissed the agreement as a laughable money grab. Which was supported by the ever increasing debt of the UN's most prominent countries, as 10% of all such purchases would go to the country that first landed on said planetary body.