Since NASA's latest high-tech robot landed on the Red Planet on 18 February 2021, many images have been available on the internet. The photographs published on the NASA website show an arid landscape with lifeless, orange-brown soil and rugged, rocky mountains rising above the horizon.

Although the photographs are distinctly otherworldly, there is something surprisingly familiar about them. Perhaps that is because the images bear a striking resemblance to a remote place here on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, to the study of which NASA has dedicated time and money.

"One could argue whether the valleys in Antarctica or the northern part of the Atacama are the driest places on Earth, but in some parts of the Atacama, rain only falls once every 20 to 100 years," explains Brian Glass (Brian Glass), principal investigator for the project Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS; 2016-2019). The project used the Atacama Desert to test instruments and methods for future missions to Mars.
Author's photograph used for the original article

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/atacama-desert-chile-mars/index.html