Nope, this isnโt Mars. This spectacular red and orange landscape is part of our home planet. ๐ Sand dunes, ancient rocks, a solar power plant, and the ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐๐ stand out in this image of the southern ๐ฒ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ซ๐๐๐๐๐ taken by a camera system on the International Space Station. The dark line of South Africaโs largest river, the ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐, winds across farm-covered floodplains toward the Atlantic Ocean. Populations are small in this desert region. The small farming town of ๐ฎ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ is barely visible compared to the local main roads, which show up as white lines etched across the landscape. The strong orange color in this image is mostly due to geologically young dunes (only a few million years old) in what is known locally as the ๐ซ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
(dune country). Poking up through the sands are sinuous hills made up of very ancient, dark-toned rocks. These rocks were folded and faulted around one billion years ago by mountain-building forces similar to those currently raising the ๐ฏ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. The ancient mountains were later planed off by erosion over millions of years to form the dune-covered plains and low hills we see today. Alongside one of the main roads lies a small, bright rectangular shape: This is the ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐. It was constructed specifically to take advantage of the high number of sunny days in the ๐ฒ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ซ๐๐๐๐๐. The plant includes nearly 240,000 mirrors covering 0.65 square kilometers (about 0.25 square miles). Unlike the photovoltaic solar panels at many traditional installations, this power plant uses mirrors to focus the Sunโs energy on a large salt-filled storage tank (too small to see in this image). The focused sunlight melts the salt, which has a high heat storage capacity. This heat in turn drives steam turbines that can generate power long after sunset. This renewable-energy plant came online in 2015. Cradit : @nasaearth #nasa #earth #africa #kalahari #bokpoort #dogelien #follow_us #instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CRfkdEwFdUc/?utm_medium=tumblr