By processing over 25,000km2 from Collahuasi to Esconida we idenfitied our Sun Project Area.
ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer) is an imaging instrument onboard Terra – the first Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite. Terra was launched on December 18, 1999 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and flies in a sun-synchronous polar orbit, crossing the equator in the morning at 10:30 am. ASTER is one of five state-of-the-art instrument sensor systems onboard Terra with a unique combination of wide spectral coverage and medium spatial resolution in the visible, near-infrared through shortwave infrared to the thermal infrared regions. ASTER data contributes to a wide array of global change-related applications including vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, hazard monitoring, geology and soils, land surface climatology, hydrology and land cover change.
ASTER consists of three different subsystems; the Visible and Near Infrared (VNIR), the Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) and the Thermal Infrared (TIR). The VNIR subsystem consists of two independent telescope assemblies. One is vertical looking and has three detector arrays collecting data in the visible green, visible red and near infrared wavelengths, while a backward looking telescope has one detector array in the same spectral band as the near infrared of the vertical array. The two near infrared (3N and 3B) generating an along-track stereo image pair with a base-to-height ratio of 0.6 and an intersection angle of 27.7degs which can be used to generate digital elevation models.
Greenfield Exploration have considered a pattern recognition methodology that applies the following aspects:
- Geo-referenciation of the ASTER imagery for XY coordinates
- Preparation of Lithological and spectral images in ERMapper format
- Selection of the best cloud free data over the area of interest
- Geo Tiff images for display in ArcView and
- Vectorization of the predicted clay mineral groups into Shape files (ArcView).
Following our National Study of Chile’s primary productive copper belt we identified a copper alteration pattern with a 90% matching accuracy, existing in only 0.01% of Northern Chile and observed in copper oxides at the Collahuasi tailings dump, the Chuquicamata and Minera Gaby Thickeners and the tailings dump of Minera Escondida.
The largest abundance of this pattern response is in the 3,000h Sun property we identified sitting roughly equidistant between Escondida and El Peñon mines which we will commence detailed exploration work on in Q2 2019.
We are as well looking for two additional large land packages to explore in collaboration with Major Mining companies which are not focused on exploration at present and prefer to work with seasoned exploration teams to monetize their assets rather than leaving them idle as a recurring cost with annual fees (patentes mineras) due each March in Chile and benefit from our exploration know-how. Chile is as well encouraging large mining companies to work with exploration juniors in order to help each other achieve mutual operating objectives based on their needs:
