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Tunisia is not unknown to the Galaxy. The small Mediterranean nation is the "Home" of Star Wars' Anakin and Luke Skywalker. George Lucas choose Tunisia as the shooting location for the planet Tatooine, but "Tatooine" is an actual small Tunisian southern town on the periphery of the Sahara. Lucas got the name for "Tatooine" from the actual Tataouine.
But that's all science fiction. Tunisia has something real, however. Tunisia has an authentic claim to being the site of a planet in the universe, sort of. The nation is no bigger than the American state of Virgina, but is home to an incredibly diverse array. From Phoenician and Roman ruins, to ancient Islamic architecture, incredible beaches, lush Mediterranean plains, the southern Sahara desert, the world's second largest salt water lake and now nothing less than Mars on Earth.
Yes, Mars! Well...kind of. Tunisia's southern region features a Mars-like region where European scientists are testing equipment for preparation for an actual flight to Mars:
From May 24-31, a team of scientists will be analysing one of the most Mars-like places on Earth -- Chott el Jerid in South West Tunisia -- in preparation for future missions to the Red Planet.
The field campaign has been organised by the Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI).
Chott el Jerid is a seasonal lake that is completely dry for most of the year. Its sun-baked surface, composed of a hard crust of sodium chloride, conceals sources of underground water and the area has a vivid red colour due to the high iron content. This environment appears to resemble closely layered deposits of chloride salts discovered at Martian high latitudes by recent missions, such as Mars Odyssey, using data from Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The Europlanet project, which links planetary scientists from more than 100 laboratories and institutes in Europe and around the world, offers scientists access to a range of planetary analogues -- places on Earth that resemble environments found on other planets and moons in our Solar System -- to test out instrumentation for future missions and to understand more about how geological systems observed on places like Mars and Titan are formed and evolve.
Chott el Jerid is a new site and before it can be made accessible to the wider planetary science community, a detailed analysis needs to be made of the geology, mineralogy, climate and microbiology of the area.
Tunisian isn't the only place in the world where there are such areas: Europlanet is also supporting scientists on future field campaigns to Mars analogue sites at Rio Tinto in Southern Spain and Ibn Battuta in Morocco, to Svalbard, an analogue Europa, and to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia, Russia.
But the fact that Star Wars was shot nearby in the southern region makes Tunisia's "Mars world" very cool because it is almost surreal and even mystical given the Star Wars past. It was as if George Lucas knew this place has a galaxy reality to it. It was as if Lucas had...felt the force.
