Copper Mine, Peru
image (1.2 Mb)
mineral-rich Andes Mountains support some of the world's biggest
mines -- gold, silver, copper and more. This image looks down the
bull's-eye of Peru's Toquepala copper mine, a steep-sided and stepped
open-pit mine. Mid-afternoon sunlight of the arid slopes of the
central Andes Mountains provides an accent to the mine contours.
At the surface, the open pit is 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) across
and it descends more than 3,000 meters (2 miles) into the Earth.
A dark line on the wall of the pit is the main access road to the
bottom. Spoil dumps of material mined from the pit are arranged
in tiers along the northwest lip of the pit. Numerous angular leaching
fields appear lower right, and the railroad to the coast is a line
that exits the image center left. The railroad was built to export
Toquepala's copper and connects the coastal port of Ilo, 95 kilometers
(59 miles) to the southwest.
was provided by the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory
at Johnson Space Center. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts
take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists
and the public and to make those images freely available on the
Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can
be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway
to Astronaut Photography of Earth.