Natural History Wanderings

SF Gate reports

Spectacular craters, a giant valley and dunes illuminated with red and pink hues pepper the landscape. Extreme weather brings icy cold and dangerously hot temperatures. This foreign world is no place for humans.

This isn’t Mars but Death Valley National Park, one of the hottest and driest places in North America. The two are so strikingly similar that NASA has been using the unique California national park as a stand-in for the red planet for decades, most recently as part of the preparation for the successful Perseverance rover landing in 2021.

Read more at The California national park that’s a favorite of NASA scientists