The curving sands in central northern Iran’s salt desert, Dasht-e Kavir, can be seen in this image from the Ikonos-2 satellite. Here, clays and sand soils have a high surface salt content owing to the concentration of minerals from high summer evaporation.
Iran is one of the world’s most important mineral producers. Earth-observing satellites are useful for finding and monitoring natural resources like minerals.

ESA supports Ikonos-2 as a Third Party Mission, which means that the Agency uses its multi-mission European ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data from the satellite to its wide scientific user community.