The image represent the a salt flat, or playa, named Salar de Atacama captured with SAR of the Copernicus Sentinel-1.

Chile’s Atacama Desert may be the driest place on Earth it is the world’s third largest salt flat (about 3000 sq km) as well as one of the largest active sources of lithium. Some areas of the desert have been compared to the planet Mars and  ESA has even tested a self-steering rover in the Atacama.

 

Below  the images, with Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1, represent a particular of the facilities for extracted the lithium: from evaporation ponds, lithium bicarbonate is isolated from salt brine.

Lithium is used in the manufacturing of batteries, and the increasing demand has significantly increased its value in recent years – especially for the production of electric-car batteries. Chile may be called “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org
https://wealthminerals.com/
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/76518/