Three Martian sites are now listed with the names of the national parks of Tassili n’Ajjer, Ghoufi and Djurdjura, specifies physicist Nourredine Melikechi, member of NASA’s Mars mission, also proud to pay homage to his native country.
“Our planet is fragile and this is a signal to the world to take care of our national parks, whether they are in Algeria or elsewhere”explains Mr. Melikechi, interviewed in the United States by AFP-TV.
For the scientist, the attribution of Algerian names to certain Martian sites is justified in particular by their strong resemblance. “The first one that came to my mind was the Tassili n’Ajjer“says Mr. Melikechi, who left Algeria in 1990 for the United States where he taught at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Algeria: rediscover the splendors of the Sahara in Tassili n’Ajjer
The Tassili is a high arid plateau of the Sahara, characterized by rock formations overlooking sand dunes, classified by Unesco for the presence of prehistoric paintings dating back at least 12,000 years.
“Every time I see photos of Mars, it reminds me of Tassili, and now when I see Tassili, it reminds me of Mars”underlines the physicist.
Several paintings show one-eyed, horned giants, which the French archaeologist Henri Lhote had described as “great Martian deities”in a book published in 1958 (“In search of the frescoes of Tassili”).
“These paintings are a signature, a book that tells how people lived in the past. We see animals there, but also characters who seem to arrive from elsewhere”says the scientist.
They were drawn, according to certain sources, after consumption of psychotropic substances by prehistoric populations.
The Ghoufi canyon, an ancient inhabited site at the foot of the imposing Aurès massif in eastern Algeria, was Mr. Melikechi’s second choice. According to him, the dwellings dug into the cliff, also classified as a UNESCO world heritage site, bear witness to human resilience.
Evoke “the wealth of natural habitats”
Ghoufi gives you the feeling that life can be hard, but that you can make it in the end: these rocks survived, the vegetation survived and so did the humans. If you look at Ghoufi’s images, they resemble certain areas of Mars and highlight the passage of time and how the planets change.— Nourredine Melikechi
The third park, Djurdjura, a snow-capped mountain range located 140 km east of Algiers, looks much less like Mars than Tassili or Ghoufi, but Mr. Melikechi proposed it to evoke “the wealth of natural habitats”.
According to the physicist, the naming process was launched after the landing in 2021 of the Perseverance rover in an unexplored part of Mars. The area was divided into “quadrants” to baptize before studying them. “We were asked for names, I suggested these three national parks, while others suggested parks from around the world”. A team then reviewed and selected the final names.
The announcement concerning the Algerian sites, made by NASA at the beginning of the month, delighted local media and authorities. The Minister of Culture, Zouhir Ballalou, welcomed a “global and historical recognition” riches “natural and cultural” of Algeria.
In recent years, the Algerian government has made efforts to promote tourism, particularly in the Sahara, through the issuance of visas on arrival. Around 2.5 million tourists visited Algeria last year, a record number for the last 20 years.
Mr Melikechi hopes the new names will attract more visitors to his home country. “These places are treasures that we, humans, have inherited. They absolutely must be preserved”.
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