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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of
land fortifications along a 20-kilometer (12-mile) stretch of the Iraq-Iran
border, near the coast of the Persian Gulf. Systems of large curved earthworks,
circular gun emplacements, and straight connecting roads run parallel to the
international border. First thought by the ISS team to be oil-pad installations, the strategic
location of these formations along the international boundary made it easier to
see these as patterns of military fortifications. This region of oil refining
and exporting was the center of numerous military actions during the war in the
1980s, especially during the defense of the southern city of Basra. The similarity to oil-pad patterns is apparent in May 2006
astronaut photos of West Texas that you can see
here and here. Astronaut photograph ISS041-E-111072
was acquired on November 7, 2014, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using an 800
millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and
the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was
taken by the Expedition
41 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens
artifacts have been removed. The International
Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS
National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the
greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely
available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts
can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to
Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Texas State
University, Jacobs Contract at NASA-JSC. |
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