[aramachandran7]

“When we came down to stay at the station starting in 2001, we brought everything with us: showers, toilets, generators, pumps, kitchen sink…” recalls Chris McKay, an astrogeophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, whose name is still visible, written in ink on the Yungay research station wall. But despite the humble settings and the lack of water, “it was magical,” he says. “We would sit around after dinner and talk science. There was no phone, no internet, just us.”