Highly reflective Rogers Dry Lake, near the center of the photograph, is composed of a hard clay surface so strong that the NASA fleet of Space Shuttles uses this facility as an alternate landing site. Discernible are several manmade features surrounding the lake—one of the major runways of Edwards Air Force Base, west of the lake; California Highway 58, the thin east-west artery to the north; borax mining and mineral extraction plants to the northeast; light and dark field patterns of irrigated agriculture to the south and southwest; and Rosamond Dry Lake to the southwest.