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Nights Beneath the Milky Way – Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies

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NASA

Jun 20, 2018
Image Article
The Milky Way is seen in the sky behind a tent in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
The Milky Way is visible from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where NASA’s ARADS team has set up camp for one month of field tests each year since 2016.

The Milky Way is visible from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where NASA’s ARADS team has set up camp for one month of field tests each year since 2016. The extreme dryness and lack of human presence in the Atacama creates good viewing conditions and the European Southern Observatory is located nearby.

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The Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies, or ARADS, project is designing tools and techniques that could be used to search for life one day on Mars or other places in the Solar System. The team’s prototype rover combines the ability to move across the surface, drill down to collect soil samples, and feed them to several life-detection instruments on board. The extreme conditions of Chile’s Atacama Desert provide one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth, where the team can test and refine these technologies and methods.

ARADS is led by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Partners include NASA centers Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, as well as Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Honeybee Robotics in New York, the University of Antofagasta and CampoAlto SpA, both in Chile, and Spain’s Center for Astrobiology.

Credit: NASA/CampoAlto/Victor Robles