Discovering the Spanish Rio Tinto region's link with Mars

The Rio Tinto mining park in Huelva Spain, is home to a unique touristic and educational initiative called "Mars on Earth".  The Mining Park, which has established itself over the last 30 years as the leading industrial tourism destination in Spain, has designed an innovative offer axed on educational tourism, perfect for space enthusiasts.

Opened on December 16th, visitors get to discover a russet landscape with crags and a red river that resembles Earth's sister planet Mars. This site is part of the European Valuetur project which promotes protected areas of high historical value in Spain and Portugal.

In this park, school children get to immerse themselves in a Mars research station or are even visited by curious astronauts in their classrooms. Part of the focus is on the mineralogical and landscape similarities with the red planet ... ideal for learning, according to Marina Santamaria, a teacher at the Virgen del Rosario school.

"You can really see the learning happen when students compare a reality with what they are working on in class," she says.

For over twenty years, specialists from NASA, ESA and more have been coming regularly to Rio Tinto to study the subsoil and the acidic river. Within this valley, they also conduct tests on their equipment and prepare for their missions to Mars.

However, getting lift-off ready is not a space person’s only area of interest. Researchers have also taken a keen interest in the region where they have discovered a very special bacterium which could provide a solution to the question of oxygen production in space.

Aquilino Delgado Dominguez is the Mining Museum director, he says the Rio Tinto's ecosystem is very special.

"It has extremophile bacteria that consume iron, sulphur and then