Need to find the nearest petrol station to your "Martian" lava field? Look no further than this travel guide to the most extreme places on Earth, where teams can field-test tools and techniques for missions to other planets.
Produced by scientists at the UK's Open University for the European Space Agency (ESA), The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues identifies choice sites for such experiments. "If you want to study lava tubes on Mars, what is the nearest equivalent on Earth? Depending on your mission, you could consider using Iceland, Hawaii or Tenerife," said Oliver Angerer, ESA's human exploration science coordinator, in the announcement.
As well as otherworldly terrain for road-testing rovers, such as impact craters, lava flows and tundra, Earth also has extremely hot, cold, acidic and salty places. These are the sorts of sites astrobiologists may want to study to find out where hardy life might exist on other worlds.
Desert warning
The guide also provides Lonely Planet-like details, including how much it will cost, when to go and if there are any unsafe conditions or dangerous wildlife. For example, the guide warns to keep an eye on your equipment in the remote Atacama desert in Chile, an analogue site for the cold, dry conditions on Mars. "The desert is not empty – there are many active mining operations and there are people traveling throughout; so do not leave any material or equipment unattended – it will disappear." Visitors to Meteor Crater, a huge impact crater outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, are advised to bring shade, lots of water and to avoid the cattle drive.
For now the catalogue focuses mostly on places that mimic Mars and the moon. But it is a work in progress and will grow in scope as new results come in from research projects and future planetary missions, its authors write.
"This looks like it could be very useful," says Rocco Mancinelli at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. "If I were interested in conducting research in the field on Mars or any other analogue environment, this catalogue would be a good place to start."
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
