Ethereal images of the Mars rover Perseverance have lit up the Internet since NASA's latest high-tech robot landed on the red planet on Feb. 18.The photos, posted on NASA's website, depict a dry landscape of lifeless orange-brown soil with steep, rocky hills snaking across the horizon.
While decidedly otherworldly, there is also something strikingly familiar about them. Perhaps that's because the images look very much like a place here on Earth, a remote desert in Chile that NASA itself has spent time and money exploring.
With Chile vaccinating its population faster than anywhere else in the Americas (including the United States), the otherworldly Atacama will likely be one of the first places in the region to welcome international visitors. So, if those dramatic images from Perseverance have sparked a new interest in Mars, the best you can do is just a terrestrial flight away.
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