An even better title would have been "Aerogel could be the material to make Mars habitable". And to be clear, I'm referring to the title on the article itself, not how it has been submitted here on HN :)
I think "material" as used in the existing title is a bit of a pithy joke (maybe in the spirit of the journalistic tradition of crafting cheesy titles). Your suggestion is certainly clearer, but maybe at the expense of being less amusing.