Atacama Desert

The driest place on Earth — it looks like Mars

Some parts of the Atacama haven't had rain for 400 years! It's so dry that scientists test Mars rovers here. Its sky is the clearest in the world, so the biggest telescopes are built here. But sometimes a miracle happens: after a rare rain the whole desert is covered in pink flowers — the 'flowering desert'!

The Atacama is a 1,600 km coastal desert in northern Chile, the driest non-polar desert: average rainfall 1 mm a year, and some weather stations have never recorded rain. The reason: the Andes to the east and the cold Humboldt Current to the west block moisture (a 'double rain shadow'). Its soil resembles Mars — NASA runs astrobiology studies here; life is limited to microbes and lichens that harvest moisture from fog. On the 5,000 m Chajnantor plateau stand the ALMA radio telescope (66 antennas) and the future ELT (39 m mirror) — 300 clear nights a year. The 'desierto florido' — after El Niño rains, 200 species of flowers bloom. Copper and lithium mines (30% of the world's). The oldest mummies (Chinchorro, 7,000 years) were found here.

Fun facts

• Some parts of the Atacama have had no rain for 400 years.
• NASA tests Mars rovers in the Atacama — the soil is like Mars.
• The world's oldest mummies aren't in Egypt but in the Atacama (7,000 years).