It Rained in the Driest Place on Earth. And We Were Testing Robots There.
Field robotics isn’t just about the tech. It’s about everything you can’t plan for.
I don’t know what it is with me and rain.
But whenever I take a robot out for field testing, it rains.
Even in the driest desert on the planet.
We were in the Atacama Desert—a high-altitude plateau in northern Chile.
It’s so dry that some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall.
NASA trains astronauts there. European Space Agency tests Mars rovers there.
And the week we showed up?
It rained.
Hard.
The dusty soil turned to sticky clay. Small lakes formed in ancient salt basins.
And somewhere in all that surreal mess, we were trying to drill into the ground with a planetary robot.
Not All Deserts Look Like Hollywood Thinks
When most people hear “desert,” they imagine sand dunes.
Endless hills of fine grains blowing in the wind.
That’s a specific kind—an erg—like the Sahara.
But the Atacama is different.
This is a hyperarid desert at nearly 13,000 feet above sea level.
The ground is rocky. Cracked. Sometimes crusted in salt.
And it’s dead. Almost nothing lives here—not even cacti, snakes, or scorpions.
It’s not just dry. It’s sterile.
Why?
Because the air is so thin and cold that it holds almost no moisture.
Even when clouds pass overhead, rain rarely touches the ground.
What little water exists evaporates before life can take hold.
So when a puddle forms in the Atacama, it’s not just rare.
It’s almost historical.
Why Roboticists Chase Mars on Earth
This is why we brought a robot here.
Mars, too, was once wet—oceans, rivers, possibly even rain.
But today it’s cold, dry, and lifeless.
If we want to test robots in a Mars-like environment, Earth doesn’t offer many options.
The Atacama is one of the best analogs we have.
We were testing a robotic drill system designed to operate autonomously for long durations.
Our goal: see if it could survive the harsh terrain, stay calibrated, and function without constant human oversight.
(If you’re curious about the engineering, you can read our research paper for the deep dive.)
But nothing ever goes as planned in field robotics.
Especially when the driest place on Earth suddenly turns into mud.
The Puddle That Shouldn’t Exist
I still remember standing beside that water puddle.
It shimmered in the sun, surrounded by parched earth that hadn’t seen moisture in decades.
Our entire crew gathered at a clay flat called a playa, watching the water settle into the cracks.
It didn’t last long. Within days, it evaporated.
It’s possible that spot won’t see rain again for another 100 years.
That’s the reality of field robotics.
You prepare for dust and get floods.
You design for dry heat and end up ankle-deep in alien mud.
But that’s also what makes it beautiful.
Even in the most lifeless, predictable environments—things can surprise you.
And sometimes, they rain.
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