NASA rehearses Mars-style rover life-detection in Chile’s hyperarid Atacama
NASA spent four field seasons in Chile’s hyperarid Atacama Desert to rehearse a Mars rover mission, testing autonomous drilling and life-detection hardware (SOLID, PISCES, LITMS) and studying how extreme dryness can preserve life while fooling detectors, with sites like Yungay illustrating the challenges of translating Earth analogs to Martian missions and informing the design of future life-detection payloads.