Saindak · Chagai District · Balochistan · 29.15–29.35°N, 61.48–61.75°E

Saindak copper–gold alteration map

Satellite mapping of the Saindak porphyry copper–gold mine, 15 km from the Iranian border. It uses NASA EMIT hyperspectral data on three dates, ASTER, Sentinel-2, Landsat back to 1990, and Google Earth Pro imagery from 1985 to 2026. Because the mine is operating, its known orebodies act as a built-in test of the method.

RegenX.eco Geospatial Computational ModelPrepared by Dinar Wali1 October 2026

The method finds the known ore

687 ha of persistent sericite alteration sits on the mine footprint, centred 0.86 km from the mine coordinate. That matches the published quartz–sericite–pyrite alteration over the East and South orebodies.

Two undisturbed targets

West: 914 ha of sericite plus 301 ha of kaolinite, 5.5–7 km west. East: 219 ha of sericite plus 98 ha of kaolinite, about 5.4 km east. Neither has been mined. Both repeat on July 2026 data and in ASTER from 2000.

The pits grew in stages

No workings in 1985. By 2011 only the South pit and tailings pond exist. The North pit opens by 2020, and the East pit opens beside the South pit by 2023.

1 · Google Earth Pro imagery, annotated

The alteration zones were loaded into Google Earth Pro as a KML and rendered by Earth on Airbus imagery of 28 August 2023, so every outline follows the terrain.

Saindak alteration facies in Google Earth — Orange: phyllic (sericite). Magenta: argillic (kaolinite/alunite). Yellow: leached cap (jarosite with ferric iron). The mine sits in the centre, the west target on the left and the east target upper right.

3D oblique over Saindak — 3D view west over the pits. The east target (RZ4/RZ7) is in the foreground, on undisturbed ground beyond the tailings pond.

2 · Pit development, 1985–2026

Dec 1985Aug 2023

Saindak pit development panel — The same frame in every epoch. The December 1985 layer is Landsat-grade and shows the untouched hills. Google Earth's October 2026 mosaic reuses mostly 2023 tiles, so 2023 is the latest truly new high-resolution view. Landsat change against 1990 was too noisy year to year to give a reliable area series, so the pit timeline rests on these images.

3 · Ranked alteration zones

A cell joins a facies when its absorption is at least 2.5 robust standard deviations above the scene on both the 27 August 2023 and 27 September 2024 EMIT dates. Coordinates are WGS84 centroids, accurate to about ±60 m. The south-west sericite belt is regional siltstone, the deposit's host rock, and carries no kaolinite, so it is shown as rock type and not as a target.

				Lat °N	Lon °E

Facies map — All facies over EMIT true colour and a Copernicus DEM hillshade. Grey shading is mine-disturbed ground since 1990. The north-east corner lies outside the EMIT swath.

4 · Spectral evidence

Spectra by group — Continuum-removed EMIT spectra. Both targets show the kaolinite doublet: a shoulder near 2165 nm and a minimum near 2205 nm. The mine footprint and the siltstone show a single sericite minimum at 2200 nm. The control is dominated by carbonate and chlorite at 2330–2345 nm. The same pattern holds on the independent July 2026 date.

5 · Validation

Group (independent date, 22 Jul 2026)	Sericite z>2.5	Kaolinite z>2.5	ASTER kaolinite z (2000)
West target	91.4%	53.3%	+2.37
East target	84.6%	42.8%	+2.37
Mine footprint (known orebodies)	87.8%	1.2%	+0.59
Regional siltstone (rock type)	78.5%	0.0%	+0.34
Control	0.1%	1.1%	n/a (no ASTER pixels)

How to read this. Sericite alone appears in the ore, in the targets and in the plain host siltstone, so it doesn't discriminate here. Kaolinite on top of sericite does. It marks the more acidic argillic alteration that forms over porphyry centres. The pits show sericite without kaolinite because their benches are freshly cut below the weathered zone. EMIT's own mineral library also finds jarosite and copiapite in the same cells 17× more often than chance (2,172 vs 124), and kaolinite 227 times against 0.03 expected.

6 · Activity 2025–26 (Sentinel-2)

Sentinel-2 change chips — Sentinel-2 medians, April–August 2025 (top) and June–September 2026 (bottom), at the largest patches of change. Most of the change is the tailings-pond water level (water was masked in 2025) and the pit-floor pond, not new footprint. The last chip shows no visible change and is a false positive.

7 · Context

Saindak is a Miocene (about 22 Ma) tonalite-porphyry copper–gold deposit with three centres: South, East and North. They are hosted in Tertiary sandstone, mudstone and volcanic rocks, mainly Oligocene siltstone. The pre-mining resource is reported as 412 Mt at 0.45% Cu and 0.34 g/t Au (Ghaffar et al., 2016, via Porter GeoConsultancy). Per press reports, the South orebody held 111 Mt at about 0.43% Cu and the East orebody about 278 Mt. The Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) has operated the mine under lease since 2002, extended in 2023. Press coverage has reported the operator seeking a licence for a new exploration block to extend mine life, which makes undisturbed alteration outside the current pits directly relevant.

8 · Method and limits

Data.

NASA EMIT L2B mineral ID (20 dates, 2022–2026).
EMIT L2A reflectance: 27 Aug 2023, 27 Sep 2024, and 22 Jul 2026 as the independent test date.
ASTER AST_07XT (2000).
Sentinel-2 L2A: 14 scenes, December 2024 – September 2026.
Landsat 5, 7, 8 and 9 (1990–2026).
Copernicus GLO-30.
Google Earth Pro imagery: December 1985, August 2011, February 2020, August 2023 and the October 2026 mosaic.

Rules carried over from Reko Diq, Hatoun, Bayan Obo and Chitral. A result must repeat across dates, stay clean on control ground and survive an independent test date. A second sensor must confirm it, and annotation is rendered by Earth on real terrain. New here: the operating mine itself serves as the positive control.

Limits.

EMIT pixels are 60 m, and the north-east corner of the box is outside the swath.
Copper minerals themselves are not detected.
Alteration does not mean ore: the targets need drilling to test grade.
Nothing here is an assay or a resource estimate.

Contact

Dinar Wali · Founder, RegenX.eco · Geospatial Computational Modelling

I build geospatial computational models that measure what the ground is actually doing. I founded RegenX.eco in 2023 to turn open satellite archives into evidence that governments, lenders and developers can act on. We have applied the model to more than 30 sites across Pakistan, the UAE, Nepal and China, and every number ships with its formula, inputs and limits.

Emaildinar.wali@regenx.eco

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/dinar-wali-621954102

Webregenx.eco

Sources

Porter GeoConsultancy: Saindak deposit summary. Location, geology, alteration, 412 Mt resource (Ghaffar et al., 2016).
Saindak Copper Gold Mine, Wikipedia: operator and lease history.
Dawn: project to close if new-block exploration licence not issued; Arab News: 15-year exploration lease; Express Tribune.
Download the alteration KML for Google Earth · Code and data on GitHub
Data: NASA EMIT and ASTER (LP DAAC), Copernicus Sentinel-2 and GLO-30, USGS Landsat. Google Earth Pro imagery © Airbus and Maxar Technologies.