The Atacama Desert Is So Dry NASA Tests Mars Rovers There
There's a desert on Earth so dry NASA uses it as a stand-in for Mars.
Fact-checked · 1 verified sourceReviewed by the CurioVault curator · 8 October 2026 · Editorial standards
There's a desert on Earth so dry NASA uses it as a stand-in for Mars.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest non-polar desert on Earth. Its core has areas where no rain has been recorded in human history. Weather stations in the interior average 0.6 inches per year, and some locations have gone 4 years without a drop. In its oldest soils, scientists estimate no significant rain for 15 million years.
The soil is so salty, so dry, and so lacking in organic matter that it matches Martian regolith. That's why NASA and ESA have tested Mars rovers, drills, and life-detection instruments there for 20 years. In 2003, a team recreated the Viking lander experiments in Atacama and found almost no life in the driest core.
And yet life survives - bacteria living inside rocks, extracting moisture from fog that rolls in from the Pacific. If life can hide in Atacama, it gives hope it could hide on Mars too. It's our closest Mars on Earth.
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