Earth from Space - Image Description

STS068-167-00C Badlands, Cheyenne River, and Black Hills, South Dakota, U.S.A. October 1994
Apparent in this panoramic, northeast-looking, low-oblique photograph of the badlands are the forested, rugged Black Hills and the meandering Cheyenne River. The gullied badlands, within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, lie east of the Cheyenne River, which rises in eastern Wyoming and has cut a valley in the soft rock of western South Dakota 300 to 700 feet (92 to 214 meters) deep and several miles wide. The Cheyenne River empties into the part of the Missouri River that forms Lake Oahe in central South Dakota (not visible in this photograph). The Black Hills, named for their heavily forested slopes that appear black from afar, are an elliptical dome dissected by streams. Barely discernible east of the Black Hills is Rapid City.

This service is provided by the International Space Station program and the JSC Earth Science & Remote Sensing Unit, ARES Division, Exploration Integration Science Directorate.