Salt lakes very often located in remote areas with extreme environmental conditions. Some of them are analogs of environments proxy for an earlier time in Earth’s history or extraterrestrial conditions (e.g. Mars). Russian science journalist Alexei Payevsky visited the saline desert area called Valley of the Moon (Valle de la Luna) in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. During a trip to the European Southern Observatory Alexei spent few days in the town of San Pedro de Atacama. In addition to the variety of geysers, mountains and volcanoes, as well as the ALMA radio observatory at an altitude of 5000 meters, near the San Pedro is a few saline lakes inhabited by flamingos and dry salt terrain Valle de la Luna. Depressions in the terrain are episodically covered with water to form ephemeral even not saline lakes but traces of lakes. The relief of the valley is very diverse: mountains, clay coated with a salt crust, salt crystals and salt caves. Local people joke that the salt from the Valley of the Moon is best suited for a barbecue. However for scientists this type of environment has different value. Recently discovered extremely halophilic CO-oxidizing bacteria from Atacama desert establishes the potential for microbial carbon dioxide oxidation under conditions that might obtain at local scales on contemporary Mars and at larger spatial scales earlier in Mars’ history. The valley was dry during the visit of Alexei. It strongly reminded the surface of Mars (at least in a way that we imagine it). Alexei kindly provided us with photos. Now we can enjoy the view of saline valleys of Chile and imagine how Mars can look like.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.
Salt formations carved by wind and water. Valle de la Luna (Chile). Photo by Alexei Payevsky.