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ASSOCIATED PRESS
RENO, Nevada (AP) -- Research on Mars is helping scientists better understand the life cycles of deserts on Earth and the potential to tap water resources deep beneath the ground, an expert said Wednesday.
"All the pictures of the Martian surface are very similar if not identical to what we see in the very dry deserts of the Earth," said Farouk El-Baz, a longtime adviser to the U.S. space agency NASA, who is being honored this week by Nevada's Desert Research Institute.
"In both places we see these channels that were formed by rain in the geologic past. We see a mixture of rocks on the surface, very much like you see here today," he said in an interview.
"The deserts of Egypt are the driest and the heart of the Sahara would be very much like Mars," he said.
A native of Egypt, El-Baz served as a science adviser to the late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. He currently is analyzing satellite images to evaluate ground water potential in arid tracts of eastern Arabia.
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