'Mars Village' for tourists, not astronauts
China will finish building its first Mars simulation base in Northwest China for ecotourism and outdoor scientific experiments by 2020, but it won't be a scientific simulation base for future astronauts, a senior scientist said.
The base will boost the local tourism economy, educate the public about space exploration and provide a multifunction, outdoor experiment field for scientists around the world, Liu Xiaoqun, director of the General Office of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily in an exclusive interview.
Some other notable planet simulation bases include NASA's Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah in the United States, Russia's Mars500 project and the most recent one - the Poland Mars Analogue Simulation 2017.
