WE GOT A FLAT TIRE on Mars. While my travel companions fiddled with the broken tire jack, I ambled down the center of the road we had been tracing. There was no oncoming traffic, no destination in sight, just the swell of rolling reddish hills. We’d left the planet.
In an era on the cusp of commercial space travel, this is the image that draws tourists to Chile’s Atacama Desert. For decades, scientists have staged it to mimic Martian terrain. But despite its otherworldly allure, the landscape is closely tied to some of Earth’s most pressing challenges.
In late 2021, the Atacama Desert circulated through the global news cycle thanks to a few viral drone photographs: dunes of discarded clothing spilled across a sea of sand. Since then, questions have swirled about who should take responsibility for
