This photo taken on Dec. 14, 2023 shows a view of snow-covered Mars Base 1, a simulated Martian habitat, in Jinchang, northwest China’s Gansu Province. (Photo by Li Ting/Xinhua)
LANZHOU, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) — The remote and expansive Gobi Desert in northwest China is increasingly accessible to the public, thanks to the emergence of space-themed tourism, which has opened up new frontiers for adventurous travelers.
The rocky expanse has been adorned with several white capsule-shaped structures, surrounded by gleaming solar panels and distinctive “craters” of varying sizes.
This is Mars Base 1, a simulated Martian habitat located in the city of Jinchang, Gansu Province, one of China’s pivotal regions for nickel, a hard silver-white metal widely used in aerospace technology.
Resembling the Martian surface, this eroded desert landscape once served as a testing ground for Chinese scientists to evaluate various space exploration robots, including lunar rovers, Mars probes and manned…
