Predicting the buried Winu copper–gold orebody from space
Using only Rio Tinto's first 42 public drill holes, our thermal mineral maps outlined the Winu system beneath more than 50 m of cover, and flagged a neighbouring deposit months before it was announced.
The challenge
Winu lies in the Paterson Province of Western Australia, beneath more than 50 m of sand and Permian cover: exactly the kind of concealed deposit most people assume satellites cannot see. We set out to test whether our thermal mineral mapping could outline it using only public information. This was our own research, not a client project.
Our approach
In March and April 2020 we unmixed ASTER thermal (LWIR) imagery into 16 endmember minerals across a 58-scene mosaic covering about 11,600 km². We calibrated against the 42 drill holes in Rio Tinto's August 2019 release, mapping where ore-related and alteration minerals overlap, then trained a predictive model on the Winu signature and ran it across the whole region.
The result
The maps reproduced the Winu mineralized footprint with more than 80% predictive accuracy and outlined the copper–gold orebodies with over 60% accuracy, ahead of the completion of resource drilling in 2021. One additional target lined up with the Ngapakarra copper–gold deposit to the east, which was not publicly announced until July 2020.
- AUG 2019Rio Tinto releases first 42 drill holes
- MAR–APR 2020Aster prediction maps completed
- JUL 2020Ngapakarra announced, already flagged