images

Toquepala Copper Mine - Southern Peru

by

Nasa/Novapix

Reference

t-saper-00002

Date

2017-10-23

The rugged, mineral-rich Andes 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. At the surface the open pit is 6.5 km across and it descends more than 3000 m into the earth. Astronaut photograph was acquired on september 22 2003 from the International Space Station (ISS).