Could life survive/thive in the atta karma desert?
The Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth, and is virtually sterile because it is blocked from moisture on both sides by the Andes mountains and by the Chilean Coast Range. Some locations in the Atacama do receive a marine fog known locally as the Camanchaca, providing sufficient moisture for hypolithic algae found under rocks, lichens and even some cacti. But in the region that is in the “fog shadow” of the high coastal crest-line, which averages 3,000 metres (9840 ft) m height for about 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Antofagasta, the soil has been compared to that of Mars. In 2003, a team of researchers published a report in Science magazine titled “Mars-like Soils in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the Dry Limit of Microbial Life” in which they duplicated the tests used by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers to detect life, and were unable to detect any signs in Atacama Desert soil. The region may be unique on Earth in this regard and is being used by NASA to test instr
