Inside the World’s Driest Desert -Atacama Desert, Chile 🇨🇱

To travel Bhutan with Nomadifly in October and November with Annu, please find the details below: Tour dates: 23rd October to 29th October To book your slot, please find the upi id: nomadifly@ptaxis If you have any queries or want to plan a trip with us, feel free to reach out anytime: Email: info@nomadifly.com Website: www.nomadifly.com Instagram:   / nomadifly   We genuinely can’t wait to travel with you all and create amazing memories together. This is just the start of something big Let’s explore the world, one trip at a time. A desert so dry that even microorganisms struggle to grow, and so similar to parts of Mars that NASA has tested robotic exploration technology here. Welcome to the Atacama Desert in Chile! In this video, I explore one of the strangest landscapes of my South America journey. Vast empty spaces, barren mountains and an almost alien appearance make this corner of Chile feel like another planet. The Atacama stretches across northern Chile, between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. It is widely recognised as the world’s driest non-polar desert. Its extreme dryness comes from a combination of mountain rain shadows, atmospheric conditions and the cold Humboldt Current off South America’s western coast. You may have heard that parts of the Atacama went around 400 years without rain. That famous claim needs context: it refers to historical accounts of particular areas, not the entire desert receiving absolutely no rain for four centuries. Rainfall varies across the region, and rare storms do happen. In its extremely dry interior, however, rainfall can amount to only a few millimetres over an entire decade. The lack of water pushes life towards its limits. Some surface soils are so dry that microorganisms may barely survive without actively growing. Yet the Atacama is not lifeless. Specially adapted microbes can survive in protected environments beneath the surface or inside rocks. Studying these organisms helps scientists understand how life copes with extreme conditions and what evidence of life we might look for on Mars. [NASA’s research on microbial survival](https://phys.org/news/2018-07-mars-so.... This is where the NASA connection gets fascinating. Through its Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies project, known as ARADS, NASA tested a research rover called KREX-2 in the desert. The team combined rover movement, underground drilling and instruments designed to search for signs of life. During the 2017 field tests, the rover drilled as deep as two metres to collect samples. Scientists from NASA and partner institutions, including Spain’s Center for Astrobiology, used this natural testing ground to develop techniques relevant to future Mars exploration. [NASA’s account of the rover tests](https://phys.org/news/2017-03-mars-ro.... The Atacama’s connection to space goes beyond rovers. Its high, dry locations are also exceptional places for astronomy. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, sits about 5,000 metres above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau. Its 66 antennas help scientists investigate cold gas, distant galaxies and the formation of stars and planets. With very little water vapour in the atmosphere, more of the faint signals ALMA studies can reach its antennas. ALMA is an international observatory partnership involving ESO and institutions in North America and East Asia, working with Chile. [More about ALMA](https://www.eso.org/public/teles-inst.... For Indian travellers, parts of the scenery may bring back memories of Ladakh, Spiti or the barren stretches of Rajasthan. But the Atacama has its own extraordinary combination of extreme dryness, unusual geology and scientific importance. Despite its empty appearance, this region also has a long human history, including Indigenous communities such as the Lickanantay, whose lives and traditions are closely connected to its oases and highland landscapes. Join me, Deepanshu Sangwan, on Nomadic Indian as I explore a desert that makes you question how life survives on our own planet, and whether it could exist somewhere beyond it. Would you travel to a place like this? Tell me in the comments. #NomadicIndian #AtacamaDesert #Chile