Desert that mirrors Mars: Atacama as Earth’s doorway to life beyond
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile—arguably Earth’s driest non-polar region—serves as a Mars-like laboratory with salt flats, near-lifeless soils, and some of the clearest, darkest skies, helping scientists study life beyond Earth and test how we search for it on other worlds, while looming light pollution threatens to erase this crucial astronomical window.
