The Atacama Desert, which stretches 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Peru's southern border into northern Chile, is the world's second driest region. It receives just 0.004 inches of rain per year(4 inches per 1000 years). We won't find a single living thing – no animals and not a single cactus, hardscrabble weed or even a blade of grass. The Atacama is a high (most elevations are over 8000 feet) and cold desert, average temperatures range from 0° to 25° Celsius (32° to 75° F).
 |
| Image : Danielle Pereira/flickr |
 |
| Image : Ross Huggett/flickr |
 |
| Image : Phil Whitehouse/flickr |
 |
| Image : Ross Huggett/flickr |
 |
| Image : Ross Huggett/flickr |
With features such as sand dunes and lava flows, Atacama looks similar to the landscape that robotic probes would find on Mars. That's one reason that NASA has used the Chilean desert as a test site. In 2005, for example, a NASA probe detected microbial life in the Atacama's seemingly barren soil, as scientists are hopeful that they'll also be able to do on Mars.
Reviewed by Vasanth
on
April 08, 2014
Rating:
