Season 3 - Future
Opening Scene
Daniel drives three hours from Calama in complete silence.
No radio. No signal. Nothing but red dust, volcanic rock, and a horizon that looks like it was designed by someone who had never seen Earth.
He paid $90 for a stargazing tour and flew in from Berlin.
But standing here, he suddenly understands why NASA comes to this desert to prepare for Mars. Because nowhere else on Earth feels more like another planet.
Origin
From ancient caravan routes to Martian simulations
People have lived in the Atacama for more than 10,000 years.
The Atacameño people crossed this desert through ancient caravan routes, adapted to one of the harshest environments on Earth, and used the stars to navigate and guide agricultural cycles.
Back then, surviving here was an extraordinary achievement.
Today, people travel halfway across the world simply to experience its extremes.
The Atacama stretches across roughly 105,000 square kilometers in northern Chile, between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
It is considered the oldest continuously arid desert on Earth and the driest non-polar desert. Some areas have never recorded measurable rainfall during the period of modern weather observations.
The desert also experiences some of the highest levels of ultraviolet radiation ever measured on Earth's surface.
Its conditions are so extreme that NASA and other space agencies regularly test Mars rovers, autonomous drills, and life-detection technologies here.
If you want to understand another planet, this is one of the closest places to start.
The Phenomenon
Chile hosts more than 70% of the world's astronomical observing capacity, making it the global center of ground-based astronomy.
Visitors can explore world-famous observatories such as ALMA, whose observations have helped reveal some of the earliest galaxies ever detected, formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
The conditions are almost impossible to replicate elsewhere.
The desert enjoys more than 300 clear nights every year.
Its high elevation, extremely dry atmosphere, and almost complete absence of light pollution create some of the clearest skies on Earth.
Dark-sky tourism has become one of the fastest-growing travel trends.
According to Booking.com's 2025 Travel Predictions, 62% of travelers expressed interest in visiting destinations with exceptionally dark skies for stargazing experiences.
In Chile, these skies are considered so valuable that the government protects them through national regulations designed to limit light pollution around major observatories.
