The Atacama Desert, located in South America, is widely considered to be the driest place on Earth, outside of Antarctic dry valleys
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The Atacama is the oldest desert on Earth and has experienced semiarid conditions for roughly the past 150 million years
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Bounded on the west by the Pacific and on the east by the Andes, the Atacama Desert only knows rainfall between two and four times a century
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The desert receives an average rainfall of just 15 millimetre every year
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It is believed that Atacama's Calama city saw no rain for 400 years until a sudden storm fell in 1972, according to NASA
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Unlike most deserts, the Atacama is relatively cold and, in its most arid parts, does not even host cyanobacteria — green photosynthetic microorganisms that live in rocks or under stones
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This region is the largest natural supply of Sodium Nitrate, which can be used for producing fertilizers and explosives amongst other things
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Soil samples from this region are very similar to samples from Mars; for this reason, NASA uses this desert for testing instruments for missions to the red planet
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During the day, temperatures in the desert can reach around 40 degrees Celsius, and in the night these temperatures can fall to 5 degrees