Vacation to Mars: Antarctica’s Dry Valleys

There are a series of dry valleys in Antarctica, about 4,000 kilometers square, that have no ice on them at all. The world’s harshest desert, the moisture is sucked from the dry valleys by a rain shadow effect — winds rushing over them at speeds up to 200/mph — that leave this bizarre and fascinating landscape, much closer to that of Mars than the rest of our planet, open to exploration.